LIBRARY OF CONGRESS. 



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UNITED STATES OF AMERICA. 



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OUR ELDER BROTHER 

THOUGHTS FOR EVERY SUNDAY 

IN THE YEAR, FROM THE LIFE 

AND WORDS OF JESUS 

OF NAZARETH, BY 

SARAH S. BAKER 






l 24= 



1892 







NEW YORK 

A. D. F. RANDOLPH 

AND COMPANY 

(INCORPORATED) 

182 Fifth Avenue 




HV 



^V-N 






Copyright, 1892, 
By Anson D, F. Randolph & Company, 

( INCORPORATED.) 



John Wilson and Son, Cambridge. 



r PHE picture that we have tried to copy is the 
picture that we remember. Our results may 
be poor and disappointing, unfit to show to our 
nearest friend, but we have the original indelibly 
fixed in memory. Every curve of the outline, every 
delicate shade is ours. 

So it is with the character of our Elder Brother. 
We try day by day to be like Him. Our imitation 
is a miserable copy indeed, but we have come to 
know and love our Perfect Example. It may even be 
that that wonderful transformation has been going 
on within us which will be perfected in the Better 
Home, when we shall (( see Him as He is," and 
(< know as we are known." 



CONTENTS. 



Before tije TOotlU m**. 

CHAPTER PAGE 

I. Self-Sacrifice 11 

II. Creation 14 

III. Steadfastness 18 

IV. Humility and Obedience 22 

a CPU, 

I. The Babe 29 

II. The Child Jesus 33 

III. Forms 37 

IV. A Name 41 

V. A Wide Circle 47 

VI. Boys 52 

iEHmtstermg. 

I. Temptation 61 

II. Babes in Christ 65 

III. Recreation 71 

IV. Seekers 76 

V. Tired 81 

VI. Relatives 84 

VII. Faults 94 

VIII. Mourn i;rs 100 



vi CONTENTS. 

CHAPTER PAGE 

IX. Self-denial 106 

X. Economy Ill 

XL Opposition 117 

XII. Deformity 121 

XIII. Parents 127 

XIV. Seeming Death 131 

XV. The Nursery .136 

XVI. The Capital 139 

XVII. Workmen 146 

XVIII. Constancy 152 

XIX. Forgiveness 161 

XX. Trust .166 

Crucified 173 

Efefll, 

I. The Grave . 177 

II. In Remembrance 181 

III. Vision 185 

IV. By the Way 188 

V. The Old Testament 193 

VI. The Sheep '. 198 

VII. Daily Bread 207 

SijscentietJ. 

I. Lost and Found 215 

II. A Miracle 219 

III. Union 224 

IV. Dying Eyes 228 

V. A Voice from Heaven 231 

VI. Persecution 234 

VII. Penitents 240 

VIII. Gentiles 244 



CONTENTS. vii 

CHAPTER PAGE 

IX. Cheer 249 

X. Weakness 253 

XL Priests 257 

XII. Churches and Church Members .... 261 

Coming again. 

I. A Glad Welcome 271 

II. The Jddge 275 

En (Slorg. 

I. Rest 283 

II. The Bride 287 

III. The Holy City 290 



Index according to Texts . 295 



before tt>e Watlb Wag. 

I. Self-Sacrifice. 
II. Creation. 

III. Steadfastness. 

IV. Humility and Obedience. 



OUR ELDER BROTHER. 



before tf>e Wwlb Wa$. 



SELE-SACKIFICE. 

The glory which I had with the Father before the world 
was. — John xvii. 5. 

WE can know nothing of the character of a 
human being, just born into the world. A 
babe lies before us a helpless riddle. His future 
development of body and soul, his gifts and his 
graces, are all to us impenetrable mysteries. 

Not so with our Great Example. We hear of 
Him in the bosom of His Father before the world 
was. He had had an existence and a character 
already, in Heaven, before the opening of His 
career on earth as the Messiah. The New Testa- 
ment, like the Old, goes back to the beginning. 

We cannot picture the glory and the beauty 
and the holiness of the Heaven where the Only 



12 OUR ELDER BROTHER. 

Begotten Son was in sacred fellowship with the 
Father ; that dazzling brightness is veiled from our 
poor human eyes. Of this one thing we are sure, 
our Lord was willing to leave that blessed Home 
and come down to the lost children of men. That 
" infinite stoop " gives us our first lesson in fol- 
lowing Christ. With self-sacrifice His intercourse 
with man begins. His perfect joy was offered up 
that He might minister to and save mankind. 

What have we to offer in return for His bound- 
less love ? Has not all that we have and are be- 
come suddenly precious to us ? 

Have you any special mental power or talent ? 
It is to be used in the service of your Master. 
Have you worldly standing, or in any way pre- 
eminence among your fellow-men ? From this 
day call it not your own. Be humble and modest 
and unworldly ; be a brother or sister to the 
destitute poor, a loving messenger of offered 
mercy to the vilest of sinners. Have you rights 
to contend for ? Is your own denied you at the 
hearthstone ? Is some proper claim there over- 
looked? Lowly in heart, set aside your petty 
contentions ; offer them all to him who offered 
all for you. 

Riches ! What are they ? Passing dust of the 
earth, not fit to be trodden upon by the Lord of 
Glory ! They cannot profit Him ! Yet with them 
you can succor those whom the Lord has been 



BEFORE THE WORLD WAS. 13 

pleased to call His brethren, even the hungry and 
the naked. Riches can even do the blessed work 
of sending willing messengers to tell the story of 
the Cross to " the nations that know not God." 
Your riches are no longer to be used merely to 
wrap yourself round with beauty and luxury, 
forgetful of the sufferings of your fellow-men. 
Not so can you follow the example of your Elder 
Brother; not so can you show your sense of His 
great offering for you. 

What a glad thrill of heart when you can think 
of something more to give up for Him who gave 
up all for you ! Your faults, your very sins, 
strange to say, have now a value. You can give 
them up, small and great, for Jesus' sake. 

Every whole-hearted offering draws you nearer 
to Christ. Every gift is a fresh secret tribute of 
love, perhaps known only to Him. 

Here begins a new stage in your Christian life. 
You are no longer your own, but your Lord's, — 
His with all you are or have, or can attain to ; 
His for time and eternity ! 



II. 

CEEATIOK 

All things were made by Him. — John i. 3. 

WE have been allowed to have some knowl- 
edge of our Lord's occupations as well as 
His character before His Bethlehem birth. We 
hear in various places in Holy Writ of His delight 
in creation, in the exercise of the Divine power 
of making something out of nothing, of blending 
in delightful harmony beauty and order and util- 
ity and beneficence. 

There is a natural longing to visit the Holy 
Land, where our Saviour walked in bodily form, 
and so to draw near to Him in loving adoration 
and human fellowship. 

We need no far foreign journey to have present 
to us what has met the eyes of our Lord, what 
has been touched by His hand, fashioned by His 
wisdom, and adapted to the use of man. The 
light that gladdens us by day, the stars by night, 
the air we breathe, the welcome voices that reach 
our willing ears, the very friends that are dear to 
us, are manifestations of His love. Not merely 



BEFORE THE WORLD WAS. 15 

the Holy Land has been trodden by His foot, but 
every atom of the round world is the work of our 
Best Friend! The whole organization of nature 
encompasses us about with mementos of His 
tender care "without whom nothing was made 
that was made." 

If we would really know Christ, we must be 
reminded of him by all the loveliness and com- 
fort and joy provided for us here below. 

There have been loving hearts who in their 
devotion to their dead have left a room and 
even a home untouched, as it was last used by 
the dear departed. The whole earth is to us 
such a home, ever bearing the impress not of the 
dead but the living Lord ! We are surrounded 
by works in whose creation He " had pleasure." 
When we study the physical laws of any depart- 
ment of natural science, we are coming into the 
thought of the Divine Being who formed them. 
Our earthly home is of His planning ; and what a 
beautiful home it is for us, poor sinful children 
of men! 

Every power we ourselves possess, whether of 
body or mind, is a direct gift from our Lord ; and 
His is the gift to find satisfaction in the use of 
these powers. In trying to develop to the ut- 
most what we have best in us, we are following 
out His faultless plan for our being; we are co- 
workers with our Lord. He gives us the inno- 



16 OUR ELDER BROTHER. 

cent enjoyment it is to exercise the strong body 
and train it to grace and agility. He has made 
it a delight to the musician to group sweet sounds 
in pleasing accord, — to the poet to put great 
thoughts into words of beauty and metrical har- 
mony, to the inventor to plan and execute, to the 
laborer to do skilfully his appointed task. 

Whatsoever our gifts or our work may be, to 
use the one or do the other to our best ability is 
a kind of praise, a direct obedience to Him who 
has made the soul and body of each individual 
man. How this thought ennobles all labor, and 
sanctifies the highest as well as the lowest work ! 

And what has the beauty of the world made 
for man to say to us ? He who made the bird to 
build his pretty nest for the bright fleeting sum- 
mer days, He who has strewn the wild-flowers 
broadcast by the cottager's door, does iiot surely 
look disapprovingly upon our efforts to make our 
temporary dwellings here below tasteful and at- 
tractive, if we do not do it in a spirit of extrava- 
gance or ostentation. He would certainly have 
us mindful of the poor in the wayside hovel or in 
the crowded alleys of the city, in the miner's 
" cabin" or the factory village, and do some- 
thing to make their homes neat, comfortable, and 
refining. He must look with pleasure on the 
kindness that prompts to adorning the sick-room 
of the invalid, the convalescent ward of the hos- 



BEFORE THE WORLD WAS. 17 

pital or insane asylum, or even the nursery for 
the little ones, so .beloved by the Good Shepherd. 
We cannot create. Our tools of mind or body, 
as well as our materials, are the gift of God. 
We may, however, with the powers of which we 
are possessed, group the materials to which we 
have access in some new manner that may min- 
ister to beauty or utility in this our lower home. 
We may help to scatter, where we pass on our 
earthly way, what may gladden the eye or cheer 
the heart or ennoble the soul of our fellows. 
For the possibility of such lowly following of 
our Lord, without whom nothing was created, we 
shall be called to account ! 



III. 

STEADFASTNESS. 

The Lamb slain from the foundation of the world. 
Rev. xiii. 8. 

SELF-OFFEBED, our blessed Lord was "the 
Lamb slain from the foundation of the 
world." Men may be capable of great deeds in a 
season of high enthusiasm, or through the long 
maturing devotedness that finds its sudden cli- 
max in a moment of daring unto death. We 
cannot conceive the infinite love and compassion 
and fixedness of purpose which could enable our 
Lord to look forward through long ages to His 
great humiliation and supreme self-sacrifice. 

It is from our Elder Brother's unswerving re- 
solve to be offered the Great Shepherd for the 
sheep, that we must learn the patient continu- 
ance in well-doing, the ceaseless pursuance of 
noble aims, the unflinching cutting off all that 
may lead us from God and holiness. 

It is written that the Master, "for the joy set 
before him, endured the cross, despising the 
shame." Even higher joy than He had known 
with the Father (and we may gather even higher 



BEFORE THE WORLD WAS. 19 

honor) was pledged to our Lord in that He was 
willing to humble himself and take upon Him 
the form of man, and be on the cross the one 
great offering for the sins of the whole world. 
We, too, are not without the promise of an ex- 
ceeding great reward. Not that our poor services 
are to have wages. Wages are for sin, — even 
the death that is wrapped up in evil doing ! 
The gift of God is eternal life ; and this eternal 
life of joy is promised to all who will accept 
free forgiveness in Christ, and strive to follow 
His example of love and purity. 

We have also, in our little measure, something 
to look forward to, from which human nature 
shrinks. We have the hour of death, the one 
thing of which we are certain in our otherwise 
veiled future. Here we have the deep sympathy 
of our Lord, who Himself passed through the 
valley of the shadow, and has " tasted death for 
every man." He knew through rolling centuries 
upon centuries just what was in store for Him. 
He knows as well just when and where we shall 
lie down and die ; and He has in reserve for us 
the sustaining strength that is to bear us through 
that trying hour. The nearer we live to Him 
now, the better it will be for us then. 

Days or months or years may lie before us 
ere we leave this our earthly path. He to whom 
" a thousand years is as a single day," will be our 



20 OUR ELDER BROTHER. 

strong consolation through all the vicissitudes 
of the way ! 

"Thine own friend and thy father's friend 
forsake not," says the Scripture proverb; and 
how we cling to those who have known and loved 
us from childhood, and have loved our parents 
before us ! Such friends do not turn coldly from 
us in the hour of trouble or humiliation. 

But what shall we say of a Friend who has 
" loved us from the foundation of the world " ? 
He has known us in advance as none other can 
know us, with all our sins and our backslidings ; 
and yet He has loved us with an everlasting 
love ! He has chosen us for His own ! He who 
has so loved us will never forsake us ! In Him we 
may have " strong confidence ! " The wild waves 
of earthly commotion may be tossing around us 
— we are safe with Him who " holds the waters 
in the hollow of His hand." He will not let us 
sink in the billows of temptation, if we but cry 
to him, " Lord, save us ! " He loves us with an 
old, old love. Before Abraham lived his mortal 
life, we were dear to our Lord, of His children 
in the faith, for whom He was willing to be the 
Crucified Saviour ! n 

There are times when a sense of desolation and 
loneliness creeps over us. We seem walking in 
darkness, and fumbling in vain for the warm 
hand of friendship to give us its cheering grasp. 



BEFORE THE WORLD WAS. 21 

Do we forget the " Friend who sticketh closer than 
a brother " ? Have we honestly tried to have 
the bond close between us and our Lord ? Have 
we sought His friendship and companionship as 
assiduously as we might that of an earthly asso- 
ciate whose affection was precious to us ? Have 
we conformed our tastes and habits and wishes 
to His, as we would to those of a beloved human 
friend ? 

May we so love this unchanging Great Friend, 
that we may live in the glad remembrance of His 
presence, and grow in His likeness, and have 
His illimitable help in every hour of need ! 



IV. 

HUMILITY AND OBEDIENCE. 
My Father, — John xiv. 7. 

AS in botanical studies, so in biography, it is 
not only the flower and the fruit we ex- 
amine, — we must know also the parent root. 

It is not to David or Euth or Abraham that 
we turn to find the spring and fount of the per- 
fect character of the man Christ Jesus. He had 
truly in His nature gathered up all the nobility of 
the long line of His earthly ancestors, down to 
that maiden, "blessed among women," who was 
honored to be the mother of the promised Mes- 
siah. But this Saviour of the world was not 
merely a man ; He was Emmanuel, " God with us. " 
He whose " compassions are new every morning," 
who of old had "not despised the afflictions of the 
afflicted," the pure and perfect Almighty God, 
sent to the fallen world His Only Begotten Son, 
the " express image " of the God of Love. 

How incomprehensible to us is the humility of 
the Son of God ! How the pride of the human 
heart is humbled in His presence ! 



BEFORE THE WORLD WAS. 23 

With what eager interest we read of our own 
forefathers, and proudly flush at their achieve- 
ments, as if we, unborn, had had a share in their 
merit ! Our own family pride we can always tol- 
erate, or excuse, or even indulge and foster. An 
exhibition in our neighbor of this same family 
pride, how unacceptable, how repulsive it is to us ! 
We seem to desire to occupy ourselves a pinnacle 
upon which few can stand,— a point from which 
we can look down on less favored mortals. This 
is not the innocent, honorable, natural satisfac- 
tion in the merits of those who are allied to us by 
blood. This is a seeking of our own honor. Men 
must hear of our claims, that we may shine 
before them with a reflected light. 

There is a radical cure for this spirit in the 
faithful following of our Elder Brother. The 
Son of God, et full of grace and truth, " comes not 
to us to claim the exclusive right to the honors 
of sonship and a home in the "Father's house." 
He wills that we shall be with Him where He is. 
To them that overcome will He grant "to sit 
with Him on His throne." 

Wandering, sinful, unworthy as we are, He 
would lead us to the Father's house, freely for- 
given for His sake. Believing ourselves orphans, 
waifs, or erring children who have forfeited their 
inheritance, and hunger far astray, He comes to 
us with the assuring words, " Your Father which 



24 



OUR ELDER BROTHER. 



is in heaven." He gladly tells us that the love 
of the Father never fails, and that He is ready to 
receive us, and even to come out to meet us and 
welcome with great joy His repentant children. 

What a lesson this is for us, proud despisers of 
the lowly, haughty teachers of the fallen, niggard 
dispensers of help to the needy ! 

If we would learn at the feet of Jesus, and 
truly follow His example, we must put aside at 
once our pride, whatever form it may assume. 
We must draw near to our Elder Brother simply 
as sinners to share in His redemption, and to 
walk lowly in His footsteps. Our Lord is not 
only full of yearning love towards His sinful 
brethren, we are told of His obedience to His 
Father. 

The will may be broken or bent to the wishes of 
another by punishment or fear; but only love 
subdues it and moulds it to spontaneous obedi- 
ence. Our submission to our Heavenly Father 
must not be that of the down-trodden slave to a 
cruel master, or a servile subject to his earthly 
monarch. It should rather be the glad yielding 
of the will to that of the Best Beloved, stronger, 
wiser, and holier than ourselves. Such obedi- 
ence makes the fulfilment of the law an exceeding 
joy- 
In many of the great natural forces and forms 
of creation there is much that we cannot fully 



'"""""mmnnimnninnninniiiiii p niH i ffl i pM 



BEFORE THE WORLD WAS. 



25 



understand, yet they can be adapted to the use of 
man. So the great mystery of the free obedience 
of our perfect Lord can come with its wholesome 
lesson to us poor revolted subjects of our Heav- 
enly King. Dwelling on His loving submission, 
we may learn to pray sincerely, as we are taught, 
" Thy will be done," before " Give us this day our 
daily bread." 

It may well be said, "The will dies hard." 
It springs early to life in the babe, and is still 
strong in the tottering old man. 

It is our earthly lesson, knowing the will of 
God to do it instantly, constantly, lovingly, 
whatever it may cost us. The words "So I 
come to do thy will, God," should be the rev- 
erent expression of our inmost wish and aim. 
We may humbly add, "For this cause came I 
into the world." "I myself am here in mortal 
form to be fashioned by cheerful obedience into 
the likeness of my Lord." 

Human beings have but rarely an opportunity 
for any one great conquest of the will. It is 
rather by the daily, cheerful submission, in a 
free and loving spirit, to small trials that beset 
our commonplace life, that the soul is trained to 
a childlike obedience. Scarcely an hour passes 
that we may not accept some little uncongenial 
duty, some passing pain, or trifling injury or 
loss, in the yielding, gentle spirit that trains us 



26 OUR ELDER BROTHER. 

to be the true servants of God. These little sac- 
rifices can nurture no secret pride, as if we had 
done some great thing. They are, therefore, less 
dangerous for us who are so easily puffed up, 
"as if we were somewhat." 

Perhaps we may not dare, with our poor wav- 
ering purpose and many inconsistencies, to say 
the sacred words, " Lo, I come to do thy will, O 
God ! " The prayer, "Teach me to do thy will," 
offered from a sincere heart, will surely be 
abundantly answered. 



% €i)ifo. 



I. 


The Babe. 


II. 


The Child Jesus. 


[II. 


Forms. 


IV. 


A Name. 


V. 


A Wide Circle. 


VI. 


Boys. 



2U €i)itt>. 
I. 

THE BABE. 

The babe lying in a manger. — Luke ii. 16. 

^TEVER to our knowledge did the Lord 
S Jesus more fully show the perfection 
of His sonship than in His willingness to shroud 
His divinity in the form of one of the most 
helpless of new-born creatures, — an unconscious 
babe. 

He who in his manhood was powerful in 
prayer, and could by a word have summoned 
legions of angels to His aid, consented to begin 
His mission on earth unable to utter a single pe- 
tition. He was to depend upon human beings 
for daily care. An inexperienced girl was to be 
His mother. He was to be defenceless in the 
midst of the world He had created. In the Father 
of all was His supreme trust. He would be 
watched over in His weakness, and be enabled to 



30 OUR ELDER BROTHER. 

grow in grace and stature until the time of His 
"showing unto Israel." 

"My Father and your Father/' so the Lord 
spoke of our Almighty King. Why should we 
fear to cast ourselves wholly, body and soul, 
earthly cares and heavenly hopes, upon this 
unchanging Friend? We are no longer helpless 
infants; we have the power of prayer and the 
promise of help through prayer. " The Almighty 
arms are under us." Let us lie peacefully and 
quietly there, sure to be borne safely through all 
that is before us. And our dear children, for 
whom we have so many anxieties, let us trust 
them to God, as Jesus trusted Himself in infant 
form, sure of the superintending care of the 
Father. Let us give our children wholly to God, 
to be His and His alone, and believe that He will 
grant us wisdom and strength to tram them for 
His service. 

Even we, poor mortals, have a tenderness for 
those who are passing through the same experi- 
ences by which we have been tried. A well- 
known millionnaire gathered around him the little 
newsboys of one of the world's largest cities. 
When the joy was the highest he said to those 
struggling children of poverty, "I was once a 
little newsboy, like you." He could make no 
long speech; his throat swelled, and hot tears 
filled his eyes. His heart was warm towards 



A CHILD. 31 

those little waifs, and they knew it. Their 
hearts beat strong with answering love for him 
who had once been like them, and knew so well 
how to feel for them. 

We can dimly think how every babe that is 
born into this world is to our Lord a memento 
of the Bethlehem Babe, who lay helpless in the 
manger. No wonder that He loved, when on 
earth, to take little children in His arms and bless 
them ! 

And what has a babe become to us? Even as 
the cross, a sign, an image, a reminder of the 
loving humiliation of our Lord. Christians have 
felt as if they were expressing their devotion to 
Christ Jesus by wearing a cross on their breasts, 
or humbly kissing the sign of His crucifixion. 
We have a living image of our Lord, which we 
may clasp to our bosoms and caress and care for 
in memory of Him, — even the babe that comes 
helpless to the world in which Christ was born 
a human child. 

The son that we love in his infancy may prove 
to us a cross of pain, through his misdoing, for 
he is of the seed of Adam ; but we need not despair 
of his final salvation. He whose grace seeks the 
prodigal in the far country and brings him home 
to the Father's house, He who pardoned the re- 
pentant Magdalen and the thief on the cross, can 
bring our wandering children at last to the blessed 



32 OUR ELDER BROTHER. 

fold. Let us be instant in prayer, faithful in 
teaching, pure in example, untiring in patience 
and love, and trust to God as to how and where 
and when our sons and daughters shall be brought 
home to the Good Shepherd. 



II. 

THE CHILD JESUS. 

Thy holy child Jesus. — Acts iv. 30. 

LITTLE children begin their lives as preachers 
and teachers. We have them in their in- 
fant years as hints of what our Creator meant us 
to be. They have truly upon them the taint of 
Adam ; but we get through them still an inkling 
of his state in the happy garden. But what an 
atmosphere is this into which they come ! Even 
the best of Christian homes is no perfect place. 
The most saintly of parents give no faultless 
example. The seeds of evil, that seem to have 
scarcely life in the tender infant's soul, find con- 
genial surroundings in which to grow with a rapid 
and rank luxuriance. They are fostered too 
often by the jarring tones of the very mother's 
voice and the fretful, angry concert of brothers 
and sisters in contention. What a responsibility 
it is to be in daily intercourse with a little 
child! 

3 



34 OUR ELDER BROTHER. 

The tender little ones in baby years are our 
living sermons. In them we find the utter un- 
worldliness that bows down to no station, and re- 
sponds to the smiles of the lowest as to the 
condescensions of the crowned head. The atmos- 
phere of love is all that the little ones crave, and 
when they find it, they give freely responsive 
love in return. They are ready to kiss the hand 
that chastened them. They bear no malice, they 
suspect no evil; they give to the uttermost, and 
gladly. Things have no factitious value to them, 
— grains of gold and sand of the seashore are 
equally precious to them. They have no past to 
regret, they fear no future. They live like the 
plants in the dew and sunshine, and grow uncon- 
sciously in grace and beauty, to gladden the 
beholder. God be praised for the little children ! 

This beautiful evidence of what our nature 
might have been we see even in our little ones, 
born of sin-stained parents, but what must the 
Holy Child Jesus have been ! 

The heart thrills at the thought that human 
beings were privileged to see and love such a 
little one. What must it have been to behold 
linked with such perfection the humility that 
touches us in ordinary childhood! Let us bow 
low before Him, our Infant Master, and learn the 
great lesson. We do so want to be something, 
or seem like something, or to do some great 



A CHILD. 35 

thing, or to seem to do some great thing. There 
are men who would rather be called great sinners 
than to sink into utter insignificance. To be 
born among humble folk and cradled in a manger 
would not be at all to their taste. To be saints 
in high life suits them better. This is a claim 
they are never willing to yield. Let these would- 
be saints compare themselves with the Great 
Pattern. 

He who, " being in the form of God, thought 
it not robbery to be equal with God, . . . being 
found in fashion as a man," could be the little 
child in the carpenter's home, submitting to 
being managed and controlled by the humble pair 
for the time set over him ! 

There are few persons in the organization 
of our civilized society who can be said to be 
wholly independent. The body politic has its 
parts, which must fit into one another. Each 
works under some higher power, or must be 
judged and controlled in a measure by his peers. 
How men chafe at this subjection and supervision ! 
What heartaches result from mortified pride, 
and unsubdued wills ignored or thwarted ! Let 
us be like our Pattern, the Child Jesus, subject to 
them that are placed over us in the providence 
of God. Let us serve our Heavenly Father faith- 
fully, though it may be in an obscure corner He 
has placed us, and look to Him alone for the 



36 OUR ELDER BROTHER. 

approval of our work. It is the humility that 
accepts its appointed place in life, and labors 
conscientiously there, that wins the precious 
commendation, " Well done, thou good and faith- 
ful servant ! Enter thou into the joy of thy 
Lord!" 



III. 

FORMS. 

Thus it becometh us to fulfil all righteousness. 
Matt. iii. 13. 

IT is sometimes fancied that the spiritual life 
is most pure when it can dispense with all 
forms and all ordinances. There are Christians 
who claim that they can worship best, not in the 
sanctuary with their fellow -believers, but in the 
quiet chamber, or on the hillside, or in the woods, 
alone with God and Nature. They crave no out- 
ward sign, they say, of the grace given unto 
them by the Holy Spirit and dwelling in their 
hearts. 

This is not the lesson taught us by the exam- 
ple of our Elder Brother. The beginning of His 
earthly life, and the opening of His career as the 
Messiah, were marked by the acceptance of the 
ordinances prescribed for Jewish and Christian 
believers. He who knew no sin was circumcised 
in His infancy, and baptized in His manhood. 
The Lord Jesus and His disciples were frequenters 
both of the temple and the synagogue. The 
Master assembled around Him His chosen fol- 



38 OUR ELDER BROTHER. 

lowers to eat of the Paschal feast, and Himself in- 
stituted the simple supper to be taken in memory 
of Him. 

Surely it becometh as "to fulfil all righteous- 
ness." Through whatever means God has prom- 
ised to bless us, those means should be to us 
precious. Souls that are hungering and thirsting 
after righteousness will not willingly neglect any 
God-sent manna by the way, any springs pro- 
vided for their refreshment on their heavenward 
journey. They rather wait upon the Lord accord- 
ing to His appointment, and leave to Him to 
send a rich blessing to His obedient children. 

Through the whole ordering of nature and 
grace, means are granted for desired ends, a con- 
tainer for a thing contained, a medium for the 
transmission of the most subtle influences. This 
we cannot explain, but so it is. We can send our 
message to our friend across the wide ocean; but 
it must travel down in the deep water along its 
allotted path. The loved voice that speaks to our 
glad ears from a distant city is not borne on the 
wings of the fitful breeze. Its way is along 
the mysterious line that the ingenuity of man 
has stretched beside the common road, or through 
fields and woods, by homesteads and villages and 
towns, to link heart to heart, and head to head, 
for the courtesies and friendly interchanges and 
the great business affairs of life. 



A CHILD. 39 

It is when the container is pnt before or instead 
of the thing contained, the means before the 
sacred end, the form before the reality, that 
the outward ministrations of religion become dan- 
gerous. The nature of man is so prone to rest in 
externals that he must ever be on the watch 
against this danger. A so-called prayer may be 
a worthless form, when it is thoughtlessly read 
from the printed book, or glibly spoken by false 
and fluent lips. It may, too, whether written 
by saints of old or spoken from the momentary 
promptings of a devout heart, be such a real cry 
of the soul to God as insures a flood of blessing. 

The Bible may be read as a tiresome duty, or 
in a critical, carping mood, or in a state of list- 
less indifference. It may, too, be sought as a 
comforter, an adviser, a guide, and a pure chan- 
nel for an influence that lifts the soul heaven- 
ward, and fills it with a spiritual joy that makes 
this life a glad pathway to the better home. 

The Sabbath may be a time of cold and rigid 
observance of religious duties, — a penance to the 
young, and a bondage to the old. It may be, as 
well, a day of growing in the spirit of love to 
God and man, a taking a new strong step heaven- 
ward, a refreshment to soul and body, and a fore- 
taste of the rest and gladness in the Heavenly 
City. 

The sacraments may be dangerous, outward, 



40 OUR ELDER BROTHER. 

soul-destroying fornis, or they may be to the 
earthly pilgrim to the Land of Beulah wells of 
water and the bread of life that nourish him with 
angels' food. 

Let all means prescribed for growth in the 
religious life be welcomed in the spirit in which 
they are given, employed in the way appointed, 
and in the remembered presence of the Great 
Giver, and they will be found sure channels of 
that grace which sanctifies the willing soul ! 



IV. 
A NAME. 

Thou shalt call His name Jesus. — Matt. i. 21. 

IT is delightful to think that in heaven there is 
not an inseparable mass of rejoicing angels 
and glorified saints, but a collection of individ- 
uals with their own peculiar characteristics and 
distinctive names. There, Abraham is still 
Abraham, and Moses Moses. The holy men of 
old have simply passed from life on earth to life 
in heaven. Even the angels, when sent on special 
messages to man, have been allowed to tell their 
sacred names, and we may so think of them per- 
sonally and individually. 

What name our blessed Lord bore in the glory 
He had before the world was we are not permitted 
to know. An angelic messenger from heaven 
declared the name that was appointed Him as the 
Saviour of mankind, even Jesus, the name above 
all others for the believer's ears. 

When we name our children we doubt and 
hesitate. The living great man, after whom we 



42 OUR ELDER BROTHER. 

would call our son, may so sin that he will be 
cast out from society, and his name be a shame 
to the helpless child. Even the friend whom we 
have trusted, and whose name we would give our 
boy, may prove our enemy, or be to us as an 
indifferent stranger, and the sound of his name in 
the family circle be a source of poignant pain. 

We give our children names, as it were, in the 
dark. We know not what manner of children 
they may be. We cannot hope to have their 
names descriptive or especially appropriate. 

The name of Jesus could well be given before 
His birth, for He came to save His people from 
their sins. He was to be the Universal Healer 
of the universal plague. 

Not by one name alone do we know our dear 
ones on earth. Love contrives all sweet names 
by which we breathe our affection for our nearest 
and best beloved. The Bible is starred all over 
with inspired names by which we may know our 
Divine Friend, as He comes to help us in all 
our human needs. We may think of our Lord as 
the Shepherd ready to seek His wandering, help- 
less sheep. He is our Captain in our strife with 
evil, our High -Priest with His one perfect offering 
for all mankind. Yes, we may not dwell on the 
more than three hundred names by which our 
Lord, in His manifold tender relations to us, is 
described in the Sacred Scriptures. To seek out 



A CHILD. 43 

and meditate upon these names is one way to 
know our Master more intimately, and draw near 
to Him with more loving confidence. So shall we 
begin to understand how He meets every want of 
our souls. So shall we grow in love to the name 
Jesus, which comprehends all, as it brings the 
dear Lord before us personally, as the one we 
love best, our comfort, our confidence, our joy ! 

May God give us grace to see and know Him 
as He is ! Since the followers of our Lord were 
"first called Christians at Antioch," they have 
borne the name of Christ, which should pledge 
them to "depart from all iniquity." Many of 
them have nobly redeemed this pledge, by pure 
and faithful lives, by a martyr's death, by un- 
flinching steadfastness in the midst of strong temp- 
tation, by warmth and zeal when surrounded by 
worldliness and indifference in the Church itself, 
by cheerful submission to sore affliction, by noble 
devotedness to the sick and suffering, — yes, 
by truly following the Great Example in all bold- 
ness, in all holiness, in all simplicity, and in all 
humility ! Of such men and women the world is 
indeed ' not worthy," yet even the world gives 
them its tribute of praise and makes their names 
symbolical of the virtues they have most strik- 
ingly represented. Who does not know what is 
meant when the word of praise is, He is a Paul, a 
John, a Poly carp, a Howard? or, She is a Mary, 



44 OUR ELDER BROTHER. 

a Dorcas, a Monica? All along the centuries, 
noble men and women have stood out as patterns 
of some form of Christian excellence, and their 
names have been adopted into common language 
and have helped to keep up the idea of what 
man ought to be, by showing what man has 
been. 

We cannot hope that our names will pass into 
this honored vocabulary, yet all of us who bear 
the Christian name embody some form of char- 
acter to the little circle to which we belong. 

Perhaps most of us would be painfully sur- 
prised to know what we really represent to the 
cool, critical, clear-sighted outside observer, who 
is not blinded to our peculiarities by party feel- 
ing or personal affection. The man who con- 
siders himself an eloquent preacher of the Gospel 
may be reckoned an unfaithful shepherd, who 
will not himself lead his flock in the path he 
points out, and whom it would be madness to 
follow in the way he treads. He who counts 
himself the champion of others' rights and a 
pleader of the cause of the down-trodden may be 
stamped as the ambitious self-seeker ! The 
woman who calls herself shy and sensitive may 
be the touchy and self-conscious, "minding her 
own things'' instead of "the things of others." 
She who would be known as the friend of the 
poor is rather characterized as the busybody, who 



A CHILD. 45 

puts herself forward, caring more for her own 
prominence than for poverty or the poor. She 
who thinks herself friendly, kindly, and hos- 
pitable may be the seeker of admiration and the 
praise of men, willing to help all outside the 
family, but cold, disobliging, and indifferent 
towards those bound to her by the ties of blood. 

There is one name which belongs most truly 
and certainly to us all, — the name of sinners. 
" The blot is on us ! " We cannot escape it ! And 
yet this name is in one way our safety. Christ 
Jesus came to save us from our sins. He died 
for sinners. We may come humbly and peni- 
tently to the mercy-seat, and plead the name 
above all others, and be forgiven and "accepted 
in the Beloved ! " 

There may be a " new name " laid up for us in 
heaven. We may be already written by that 
name in the Book of Life. That name may ex- 
press that we are "saved as by fire," or that we 
have "resisted unto blood, striving against sin," 
or that we have been " conquerors through Him 
that loved us." That great secret of the far 
future no one now can know. That name may 
tell the timid follower, who has almost feared to 
call himself of the family of Christ, that he has 
been a dear child of his Heavenly Father in the 
midst of his trembling upward walk. The puz- 
zled doubter, head-wrong and heart-right, who 



46 OUR ELDER BROTHER. 

in a pure life and an earnest seeking of the 
truth, has been "faint but pursuing," may find 
that he has been as the blind, whom Jesus was 
leading, though he knew it not. 

When those new names are read, the lowest in 
his own estimation may find himself the highest, 
— "the first may be last and the last first." 
Then, be our crowns shining with many stars or 
dim with the shadows of our earthly past, we 
shall cast them down before the Lord, who has 
bought us with His blood and has given us, un- 
worthy children of men, an abundant entrance 
into His Heavenly Kingdom. 



A WIDE CIRCLE. 

We have seen His star in the East, and are come to worship 
Him. — Matt. ii. 2. 

OUE Saviour was, in His teaching and in His 
life, both democratic and cosmopolitan. 
Not that it was His object to overturn existing 
forms of government. Loyalty, not lawlessness, 
is the spirit of the Christian religion. Our 
Elder Brother was democratic in the sense that 
the distinctions of life — high and low, rich and 
poor, socially respectable or simply repentant — 
were as nothing in His sight. At His very en- 
trance into this world, this tendency was em- 
phasized. He lay in the manger of a wayside 
inn, a carpenter His foster-father, His mother a 
humble young woman, made a wife through the 
loving pity and firm faith of her betrothed. To 
simple shepherds, pursuing their modest calling 
at night, bands of angels announced His coming. 
A Jew by blood and birth, limiting the scene 
of His earthly ministry to His native land and 
condemned to death in the sacred city of His 



48 OUR ELDER BROTHER. 

people, He was yet, from the beginning of His 
career below, to be not only the king of the Jews, 
but the Eedeemer of all mankind. He rever- 
enced the law and institutions of Israel's race, 
and so loved the doomed capital that he cried 
out with tears, "0 Jerusalem, Jerusalem, how 
often would I have gathered thy children to- 
gether as a hen gathereth her chickens under her 
wings, and ye would not! Behold your house 
is left unto you desolate ! " Yet in Him all the 
families of the earth should be blessed. He was 
not the prophet or Messiah of one people only, 
but the ends of the earth should praise Him! 
That lone star that guided those seekers of truth 
from the far East to come with their offerings to 
the stable of Bethlehem was the first flash of the 
light that was to lighten the Gentiles, and the 
promise of the distant day when all nations 
should bow the knee to Jesus, and lift up to Him 
united prayer and praise. How constantly, — by 
direct teaching, by miracle, and by example, — 
our Lord rebuked that selfish kind of patriotism 
which would arrogate to itself all honor, and all 
claim on the Divine blessing, to the contempt of 
outside strangers and foreigners, and their exclu- 
sion from the partaking of the richest blessings 
of Heaven ! 

The spirit that limits the circle of true Chris- 
tians to this cluster of believers here, conducting 



A CHILD. 49 

their public worship according to this established 
rule, clothing their priests precisely so at the 
altar, celebrating this feast in this authorized 
manner, or giving that doctrine the supreme pre- 
eminence, is quite foreign to the spirit of the 
Great Founder of our religion. The glad revela- 
tion of the Gospel of love and self-sacrifice comes 
to us with a freedom that fits it for all times and 
all nations. Many are the vessels and many the 
forms that can convey its life-giving essence. 
Away with the narrowness that divides brother 
from brother by the church walls, which to Him 
who sitteth in the heavens are but as are to us 
the irregularities on a polished surface, invisible 
to the naked eye. Let us love and give and 
praise, walking in the purity of God's law, and 
accepting the great redemption through Christ, 
for all who will believe on His name and follow 
His example! 

True religion begins in the family, making 
dearer every tie of blood, and through love oblit- 
erating self and joining master and mistress, chil- 
dren and servants, in one glad household, walking 
heavenward together, each in its place, but with- 
out pride of place, or murmuring rebellion, or 
servile obsequiousness. Where love reigns there 
are order and obedience and mutual help and sym- 
pathy. Such households are the little temples 
in which the Great High-Priest is ever present. 

4 



50 OUR ELDER BROTHER. 

After the family comes friendship. He who 
loved Martha and Mary and Lazarus, and com- 
panied specially with Peter and James and John, 
understands this need of the human heart, and 
provides for its innocent gratification. He gives 
that Christian love and fellowship which can 
make the room where two or three are gathered 
together in love and prayer, as well as where 
many are joined in the great congregations, as 
the entrance gate of heaven ! 

But true Christian love is not shut up to the 
domestic hearth, or limited to the circle of friend- 
ship. It is like the fountain that leaps to the 
sunlight, and scatters refreshing drops not only 
on the rich greenness that encircles it, but on the 
thirsty grass far and wide, and refreshes the air 
for the weary passenger who but sees in the dis- 
tance its sparkling beauty. 

It is a poor, narrow Christianity that does not 
find its way to the poor, the ignorant, and the 
wicked, and to the "nations that sit in darkness 
and know not God ! " True Christianity makes 
true patriotism a thing not of selfishness or am- 
bition, but, in an enlarged and wider sphere, the 
carrying out of all that is loveliest in family 
life. It has, too, its friendship for outsiders, 
a large and loving recognition of all that is noble 
in other lands, and a willingness to grant them 
their due meed of honor, and to insure them 



A CHILD. 51 

their due share in the blessings of civilization 
and religion. Such friendship recognizes that 
the swarthy African and the subtle dweller in 
Eastern magnificence, the sturdy men of the 
frozen North, the listless loungers of the isles 
of the sea, have hearts like our own, the same 
loves and dangers and death. Do they not need 
the chief joy of life, the comfort of the sick-bed 
and the house of mourning, the light when the 
world grows dark in the shadow of death? Let 
the light to lighten the Gentiles shine in every 
land ! In zeal and self-denial, in loving gener- 
osity, let the Christian nations join in sowing the 
good seed beside all waters ! 



VI. 

BOYS. 

And He went down with them and came to Nazareth, and 
was sulject unto them. — Luke ii. 51. 

"IT THAT shall I do with my boys?" is the 
V\ anxious question of many a mother's 
heart. If there were unlimited truth in the say- 
ing that "The boy is father of the man/' well 
might the mothers despair. Happily, there is 
much in the wild, mischievous, thoughtless 
nature of boys that passes away with early youth. 
There is much, however, in the cast and drift of 
character that always will remain the same, even 
though the child should early have the best of 
blessings, the beginning of a true Christian 
life. 

There was one mother who knew no anxiety as 
to the development of her son. She could be 
sure that He would grow in wisdom as in stature, 
and "in favor with God and man." She had no 
strange budding plant, entrusted to her care, 



A CHILD. 53 

that might yield a beautiful fragrant blossom, or 
possibly a poison flower. She had no mere 
human child in her keeping. She was " blessed 
among women." Her boy was the Son of the 
Highest, Emmanuel, who should save His people 
from their sins, and whose kingdom should have 
no end ! What joy must have filled her heart 
when she looked upon her perfect child, and dimly 
foreshadowed the great future before Him ! 

Once she sought Him sorrowing, not that she 
could fear that He had gone astray from the path 
of holiness. She was to find Him already about 
His Heavenly Father's business, but ready to go 
down with her to Nazareth to be the obedient 
child in the carpenter's home. 

What a comfort it is to know that Jesus is a the 
same yesterday, to-day, and forever." He has 
had a boyhood of His own. He has lived among 
boys and knows their nature and their tempta- 
tions. He was tempted not only "like as we are," 
but like as they are, yet without sin. When all 
human friends have lost patience with an erring 
boy, we can think how tenderly our Saviour, 
who understands so well to what boys are ex- 
posed, looks upon the offender. 

"Christian mother, go with your prayers for 
your boys to the Lord Jesus ! He knows better 
than you do the peculiar faults and temptations 
of your son. He can make you wise to rule and 



54 OUR ELDER BROTHER. 

guide him. He can give him the pervading in- 
fluence of the Holy Spirit to quicken his con- 
science. He can be to him "as a wall around 
him by day and by night/' to preserve him from 
the dangers that threaten him from without and 
from the sins that are surging within. Mothers, 
lean on the Lord Jesus, and go patiently and 
hopefully forward. Go forward patiently and 
hopefully, but still actively. Mothers may and 
must fold their hands in prayer, yet not in indo- 
lence or despair. Here, as everywhere, faith and 
works are inseparably linked together. There 
is no promise that your children are simply to 
be borne heavenward on angels' wings, while 
you look admiringly on, or busy yourself as 
pleases you best, either inside or outside of 
your home. 

The plants that minister to our bodily neces- 
sities need care and culture. The crops that fill 
the garner and feed the hungry do not grow on 
the neglected hillside, but in the fields culti- 
vated by the toil of man. Human beings are 
given to human parents to be cared for and 
trained and educated. Their very helplessness 
keeps them near to and dependent upon father 
and mother, at an age when the young of the 
beasts of the forests are free rovers by wood and 
flood. 

The first years of a child are all your own. 



A CHILD. 55 

Begin at once to mould him for a pure life on 
earth, and a bright future in the Heavenly Home, 
Be methodical, be gentle, be firm with him, from 
the very first. Let the boy be early taught good 
habits, and to be subject to your will, as to food 
. and sleep and cleanliness, before his own will 
can assume the mastery over his fleshly habita- 
tion. Give him an atmosphere of love to grow 
in. Keep him happy by your cheerfulness, let 
your smiles prompt his own. As soon as he can 
fold his hands for thanksgiving, associate that 
thanksgiving with his daily food. Let him early 
remember to trust himself, loved and forgiven, 
to the care of his Heavenly Father for the night, 
and wake to thank that Father for peaceful sleep 
and a new day of blessings. 

But we cannot follow with the mother that 
child's pathway through life. For her, while he 
is under her care, there will always be self- 
sacrifice in the present and the future. She is no 
longer her own, since she has become a mother. 
A tender child-hand, visible or invisible, is al- 
ways drawing her, often when she would be wholly 
free. It is written, "She that liveth in pleasure 
is dead while she liveth." This is even true of 
the maiden, in her glad days of girlhood. Mere 
pleasure is not the end of any human life, at any 
stage, though much innocent joy may be, and 
should be if possible, the portion of all God's 



56 OUR ELDER BROTHER. 

creatures. A mother, however, has turned 
her back upon self-indulgence in any form, 
when once her little one has been laid in her 
arms. 

How we are moved at the thought of that 
mother swept away by the overpowering flood 
that destroyed a whole town, — borne off by the 
wild waters, her children clinging about her. 
Clinging they still were, dead like the mother, 
when stranger hands took them tenderly from 
the wasting deluge, and strong men's tears fell 
at the sight. 

Such scenes we perhaps see unmoved around 
us. There are mothers dead in pleasure, with 
children "dead in trespasses and sins," fast 
clinging to them. Poor little children, who 
have mothers who cannot forego the follies and 
pleasures of this life, to give time and thought 
and love and wise, tender care to their young 
families. How can such mothers expect a self- 
denial and patience from servants, which their 
own natural affection is not sufficient to prompt? 
It is generally the neglected children who break 
the mother's heart, or bring her to shame by 
their misdoings. 

The self-sacrifice of the mother does not end 
in the nursery. There it merely begins. If you 
would have your boys in any way like the Lord 
Jesus, be to them at least a Christian friend, 



A CHILD. 57 

who loves their society, and moulds them to pure 
tastes, holy thoughts, and a blameless life. Be 
what you should be, and be much with your boys, 
ye dear mothers, who would lead those boys to 
happiness and heaven. 



Ministering. 



I. Temptation. 
II. Babes in Christ. 

III. Recreation. 

IV. Seekers. 
V. Tired. 

VI. Relatives. 
VII. Faults. 
VIII. Mourners. 
IX. Self-Dental. 
X. Economy. 
XL Opposition. 
XII. Deformity. 

XIII. Parents. 

XIV. Seeming Death. 
XV. The Nursery. 

XVI. The Capital. 
XVII. Workmen. 
XVIII. Constancy. 
XIX. Forgiveness. 
XX. Trust. 



Ministering* 
I. 

TEMPTATION. 

He Himself having suffered, being tempted. — Heb. xi. 18. 

A PERSON" who has been surrounded from 
childhood with the refinements and re- 
straints of a high form of civilization in a Chris- 
tian land cannot but be shocked and outraged by 
finding himself in the presence of sin in an un- 
abashed and flagrant form. The same sin may 
have its essential root in his own heart, in self- 
ishness or hate or irreverence or in the inability 
to control bodily indulgence, yet it may still be 
abhorrent to him in its ultimate and full de- 
velopment. 

Even more painful is the awakening to the 
fact that the once despised sin of the open evil- 
doer is now to him a temptation, is gaining 
ground with him, is perhaps taking the mastery, 
and binding him a hopeless victim. 



62 OUR ELDER BROTHER. 

We, poor human beings, can have a horror of 
sin, but we have no real conception of its true 
danger and malignity. We cannot measure the 
humiliation that it must have been for the na- 
ture of the Lord from heaven to be blended with 
the being and organization of a child of Adam. 
It is true that He was tempted yet without sin, 
yet He must have "suffered being tempted." We 
can understand how this mysterious experience 
draws Him near to His struggling, tempted breth- 
ren, and how exactly He knows how to adapt His 
sustaining grace to their needs in their lifelong 
contest with evil without and within. He is and 
ever must be touched with a feeling of our in- 
firmities, and ready to stretch out to us the 
helping hand. 

What is usually called "the temptation of our 
Lord" was a special experience at a definite 
time. It is recorded how He triumphed in that 
conflict, and it is added, " The devil left Him for 
a season," — for a season only, it seems. Of his 
future assaults we know nothing. The life of 
our Lord has its own secret history, and so it is 
with all those who strive to follow His perfect 
example. 

Only our Lord Himself knows how and where 
His chosen saints have their most bitter strug- 
gles. Of this one thing only we can be sure re- 
garding our fellow-Christians: if they be Chris- 



MINISTERING. 63 

tians indeed, and growing in the likeness of their 
Master, they "suffer being tempted." 

While temptation is suffering, there is always 
hope for a human soul, — there is still left a trace 
of the image of the God to whom sin is abhorrent. 
When conscience has been silenced by the power 
of evil habits, then indeed is the soul threatened 
with a sickness unto death. The fools who 
"make a mock at sin," and laugh at their own 
wickedness or that of their companions, are far 
gone in the dark downward path. 

Do you shrink pained from finding in yourself 
the slightest worldly motive or ambition, or bow- 
ing of the heart to riches and high station? Do 
you see its meanness, its opposition to the Bible 
precept to be no respecter of persons? Then 
you may still hope to escape the love of the world, 
which cannot exist with the love of the Father 
in heaven. 

Is your most trifling departure from truth a 
cause in you of shame and real repentance? 
Then your lips may yet be made free from guile, 
and from the thing- which God "hates," even 
"the loving and making a lie! " Is a foul word 
or story uttered in your presence a repulsive 
source of pain to your inner consciousness? Then 
you may yet be of the pure in heart who shall 
see God. 

When you have ceased to suffer from tempta- 



64 OUR ELDER BROTHER. 

tion, and from even the slightest consent to sin, 
the battle for yon is well-nigh lost. Eouse your- 
self to renew the conflict before it is too late! 
Keep near to Christ! Remember His presence, 
and your conscience will grow tender by such 
association and such remembrance. 

Watch over your little children that they fall 
into no such habits that any form of temptation 
shall cease to be to them a source of pain. Bad 
habits rob temptation of its suffering. Good 
habits help to keep the conscience alive and 
active. Oblige your child to do right, if you 
cannot perusade him to do so of his own free 
will. Form his tastes and his habits, and pray 
that God may give him the inner life, that will 
make those habits an expression of what he most 
desires to be. Walk yourself blameless as far as 
you can, and so you will do your part to keep 
yourself and him sensitive to the evil of sin. 



II. 

BABES IN CHRIST. 

And He called unto Him whom He would, and they came 
unto Him. — Matt. ii. 13. 

BABES in Christ! It is a scriptural expres- 
sion, not merely the language of man. 
Nay ! Man would rather represent that the true 
Christian, really born again, must have attained 
at once to the perfect measure and stature of the 
follower of Christ. Nor is this an unnatural 
mistake. There is so unspeakable a difference 
between life and death that even the new con- 
vert himself, in his joy at the great change that 
has passed over him, is tempted to believe that 
he who has been chief of sinners has suddenly 
become chief of saints. 

Here the wise caution is necessary : " Let not 
him that girdeth on his harness boast himself as 
he that putteth it off." 

The babe is a wonderful thing, a new crea- 
ture. It is a being born to be developed to noble 
manhood, an heir, if he will, of a life of endless 



66 OUR ELDER BROTHER. 

joy. Well may there be gladness in a home to 
which such a little one has been sent by the 
Heavenly Father ! Yet the child's life is at its 
beginning. It can only be rejoiced over as a 
babe. 

So it is with the beginners in the heavenly 
walk. True Christian hearts throb with glad 
thanksgiving when another soul is born into the 
kingdom. There is even joy in heaven over one 
sinner that repenteth. Such beginners must 
remember, however, in the midst of their exu- 
berant transports, that humility is the crowning 
virtue of the Christian life. 

How different is the babe with its helpless 
body, its unawakened heart and dormant mind, 
from the noble man with his muscularly devel- 
oped, stately form, guided and governed by the 
will within, — the heart with its deeply rooted 
affections, the mature mind with its culture and 
its mighty power to know and understand. Yet 
they are one and the same being at different 
stages of existence, the individuality never lost, 
the full, mature beauty wrapped up in the poor 
infant, less able to supply its own wants than is 
the flower to open to the dew and the sunshine. 

The saint in the new Jerusalem may be as 
unlike the same saint on earth as is the babe to 
the strong man, and yet he will be himself, 
through all the stages through which he may 



MINISTERING. 67 

pass, an individual being, created and developed 
through the almighty power of the God of Love. 

In the babe in Christ there may be infolded a 
blessing to mankind. Let him but remember 
that he is at the beginning of his course, and 
humbly and modestly, with prayer and patience, 
tread the Christian walk, ever looking to Him 
who has given him this new life to sustain and 
unfold it to full fruition. 

The Jews who came out from the multitudes 
who thronged to hear the wonderful words, they 
who listened to His call and joined themselves to 
Christ, He was pleased to reckon at once among 
His followers. Yet how He instructed and warned 
and reproved them, and even the chosen twelve 
who were with Him by day and by night, and 
constantly heard the blessed words that proceeded 
out of His mouth ! How faithless, how human, 
how far from sharing their Master's spirit were 
they, one and all ! Yet He did not cast them 
out. Let us learn from the love and patience of 
our Lord to welcome warmly the beginners in 
the Chistian life, and not to expect a sudden 
perfection in the jaded sinners who have just 
cast oft' the yoke of the world, the flesh, and the 
devil. Let us be glad that they have set their 
faces heavenward. Let us be careful that our 
wandering footsteps do not lead them from the 
right path. Let us strive to surround them by 



68 OUE ELDER BROTHER. 

loving sympathy, and help them by a faithful, 
consistent example. 

You who walk in your uprightness, and would 
condemn your fellows as unworthy members of 
the Church of God, beware lest you are scorning 
one of the "little ones," the babes in Christ, 
struggling towards a stronger life ! Make them 
feel that they are a part of the body of Christ, 
dear to all its members, and dear to the great 
Head Himself. The babe in the family is the 
object of the tenderest care. 

In taking our nature upon Him, our Lord be- 
came part and parcel of us all. With what 
divine compassion He regards those of His chil- 
dren who have just awakened to a new life. He 
will well know how to foster that life and bring 
it to maturity. Let Him deal with His own. 
Help if you can in the spirit of a devoted elder 
sister or brother, not of the impatient stranger 
or of the harsh heathen who would cast out the 
weak and sickly babes to a certain death. 

And you, beginners in the heavenly walk, do 
not be content to be always babes. You must 
grow, or you will be dwarfed, deformed, or droop 
perhaps to a hopeless death. Growth is by food 
and exercise and rest and tender care. This care 
the Shepherd has promised to His lambs. The 
food you know how to obtain. You know how 
to have your needs supplied. LTse the means of 



MINISTERING. 69 

grace. Lean on the ever-present Saviour. Do 
the duty of the hour. Walk conscientiously, 
courageously, consistently, and for you is the 
path of the just into the perfect light. 

Be patient, mothers, with your little children 
who lisp of "love to Jesus," and a desire to "be 
good," and yet are so full of childish faults and 
shortcomings. Do not despair of them. Do not 
taunt them with insincerity, because their ex- 
pressed wish to be lambs of the flock is so soon 
followed by conduct that is far from lamblike. 
Let them see that you trust them, and believe in 
their sincerity, while you must point out to them 
their faults, and visit them with wholesome dis- 
cipline or deserved punishment. Let them feel 
that you would in this way carry out their ear- 
nest wishes, so confidingly expressed. 

And you, young Christian, who are ready to 
lose courage, and doubt if you are in the way of 
life, because your sins are so many, and your 
character is so ill-regulated, do not let these signs 
of babyhood make you doubt whether you are 
living. Your very heplessness and danger may 
lead you to trust more entirely and humbly to 
the Great Friend, to guard and guide you. It 
may be growth and development you need, not 
life. If you want to be a child of God, want it 
with all your heart as your chief desire, cherish 
that beginning of a new life. The Lord Jesus 



70 OUR ELDER BROTHER. 

stretches out His hand to such as you. Take it ! 
take it firmly and walk by His side in prayer and 
faithful practice, and you will grow out of baby- 
hood into the sure and happy life of the true 
children of God. 



III. 

EECKEATION. 

A nd both Jesus was called and his disciples to the wedding. 
John ii. 2. 

OTJK Lord is welcomed to the funeral and the 
house of mourning, but how few bid Him 
to their feasts or would have Him at their merry- 
makings ! We seem to class Him with those 
friends whose slumbering tenderness towards us 
is drawn out by our afflictions, but who cannot 
rejoice in our happiness. 

Sorrow, in whatever form it may come, is in 
the eyes of the world a kind of humiliation. 
From the height of their better fortune, the hon- 
ored, the happy, the successful may look down in 
a kind of complacent pity on the mourning, the 
disappointed, the sick, and the suffering. Not 
so with our Lord. 

If you fancy you love your brother, your friend, 
your neighbor, question yourself whether you are 
filled with glad sympathy when he has some 
sudden joy or honor or success. If you ask your- 



72 OUR ELDER BROTHER. 

self the question in the presence of God, the All- 
knowing, perchance yon will be obliged to mur- 
mur the " God be merciful to me a sinner ! " of 
the conscience-smitten publican. 

Our Lord Jesus when on earth was not a friend 
only for dark days. He could stand by the grave 
of Lazarus and weep with the sorrowing sisters, 
but could as well be present at the wedding at 
Cana of Galilee, an honored and welcome guest. 

In our deep realization of the solemn mission 
of our Lord to this sinful world, we are too apt 
to forget that He came as an image and expres- 
sion and embodiment of the God of Love. The 
morose reformer is not likely to be bidden to 
feasts where his presence is only a gloomy shadow, 
and his countenance as a threatening cloud. We 
may be sure that even in His holy purity this 
was not the impression made by Him whose 
" compassions are new every morning." There 
was sunshine about Him, or the mothers would 
not have thronged around Him with their little 
ones, the despised sufferers would not have 
looked trustfully to Him for help, the outcast 
sinner would not have turned to Him for pardon. 

We seem to fancy that God made our eyes for 
tears, and that from some other power came 
their glad twinkle of merriment, or their expres- 
sion of innocent joy, in the midst of social con- 
verse. Who wreathed the mouth with smiles 



MINISTERING. 73 

that answer to smiles? Who made the dimples 
to come and go in the baby's face? "Who lit the 
glad, loving light in its eyes, as it begins to be 
aware of the tender care of its mother? 

Why will we not remember that joy is as 
much the gift of God as sorrow, and to be as 
freely accepted in His presence? We will hold 
fast to the heathen idea of the Most High, and 
think we must "cut ourselves before Him," and 
rob ourselves of light and hope, to be His accept- 
able worshippers. 

In the beginning of His earthly ministry our 
Lord gave an open protest against this concep- 
tion of the Friend of Sinners, while at the same 
time He stamped His approval on the glad honor- 
ing of the institution that sets men in families. 
Later, He was not slow to express plainly His 
sense of the permanence of the marriage tie. 
Our Saviour sanctified the mutual duties and the 
sacred joys of home. 

As parents should dare to be innocently happy 
in the presence of God, so should their children 
be encouraged to let their natural joyousness 
have vent at the side of father and mother. 
When all the merriment and gladness of the 
little ones is shut up to the nursery, or only let 
loose on the playground, or in the secret haunts 
of the children, where schemes of mischief are 
plotted and planned, a dangerous gulf is yawning 



74 OUR ELDER BROTHER. 

in the home, a gulf that may ultimately cut off 
the little ones from the affectionate sympathy, 
the tender counsel, the wise guidance of those 
whom God has set over them for good. 

There is a worm in the rose when it does not 
open to the glad sunshine. There is danger in 
the joy that shrinks from the companionship of 
the wise and good. That is a false happiness 
that cannot be welcomed as a gift of God. 

Amusements have come to be dreaded as a 
power for evil, because they are too often an ex- 
pression of a desire to escape from the lawful 
restraints of soul and body, that are absolutely 
essential for true and lasting happiness. 

There are so-called amusements that are indul- 
gence in questionable pleasures, or are the well- 
known road to open sin. Here the rule should 
be, " Touch not ! Taste not ! Handle not ! " 

There are many amusements, in themselves 
innocent, that are most dangerous when they 
tempt pleasure-seekers to make them the busi- 
ness of life. There are some people who are like 
children who would ride the hobby-horse all day 
long, to the utter neglect of all proper lessons 
and all prescribed occupations, 

Some amusements may not be objectionable in 
themselves, but made dangerous indulgences be- 
cause the sharers in them are not sufficiently self- 
controlled, not sufficiently pure, to avoid making 



MINISTERING. 75 

a destroying poison of what should be an innocent 
recreation. 

There are still other amusements that ought 
to be high and ennobling, but public taste makes 
them ministers to folly and prompters to sin. 

When we harshly condemn this or that amuse- 
ment, perhaps we should more justly blame our 
own hearts, or the spirit of the social circle of 
which we are a part, — which our own tastes and 
principles do their share in forming. Let us all 
dare to be both inwardly and outwardly what we 
should be, happy children of a Heavenly Father, 
and the question of lawful amusements will be 
simplified for us and our families. We shall 
so help to make it possible for others to enjoy 
necessary recreation, without being sullied in 
heart, or unfitted for the appointed duties of 
life. We may cut off this indulgence, and this 
place of amusement, and that diversion, and this 
style of reading, all perhaps, in the present state 
of things, reprehensible, but this cutting off will 
not prepare us for innocent amusement, unless 
the heart is so purified and the will so directed 
that we can be naturally happy with the remem- 
brance that we are in the presence of our Heav- 
enly Friend. 

Let us accept gratefully all blameless enjoy- 
ment, and accept it ever as given of God. 



IV. 

SEEKERS. 

Nicodemus, which at the first came to Jesus by night. 
John xix. 39. 

THERE is perhaps no way in which we could 
better judge of the real character of a dis- 
tinguished man than by noticing the manner in 
which he received the various persons coming to 
him for aid or counsel. How often, in mere 
human beings, there would be something of 
pride of place, or consciousness of superiority, 
or affected condescension, or selfish indifference, 
or the deep-seated worldliness that has an ear 
and a smile for the prosperous and great, but a 
haughty disdain or a hasty rebuff for the down- 
trodden or the needy. 

It is in our dealings with men at large that we 
show what we are. It is sometimes a sad surprise 
to one who has found a stranger congenial and 
attractive in a tete-a-tete, to see that same person 
in other society, echoing or accommodating him- 
self to the tone of thought of the vicious or of 
the open scoffer. 



MINISTERING. 77 

The unchangeableness of our Lord — the same 
always in love and purity and dignity — cannot 
but strike us as we follow Him in his intercourse 
\\ T ith all states and conditions of men. When 
the ruler Nicodemus came as a seeker of truth 
to Jesus, but secretly and by night, he -met no 
cold rebuke. He was given freely to drink of 
the living waters, blessed words were spoken to 
him, on which we Gentiles, at this remote day, 
delight to dwell, as the bulwarks of our faith 
and our strong consolation. 

Our Lord gave loving and gracious answers to 
Nicodemus, but He did not fail to add the great 
lesson for all puzzled seekers, that the dawn, if 
it be indeed dawn, must end in the perfect day. 
It is the man ashamed of his earnest search after 
truth and holiness who is unwilling to let his 
fellow-men know that he considers such a search 
the most important aim of a human life. It is 
only he who is walking in the law of God, as 
far as he knows it, and living in purity and sin- 
cerity .while seeking immortal truth, who can 
hope to find light, and rejoice in its life-giving 
beams. 

Far down in the ground the seed may be quick- 
ening, or shooting patiently upward through the 
dark soil, but this is but the beginning of life. 
It must eventually up to the sunshine, the 
dew, and the free, pure air, if it is to bios- 



78 OUR ELDER BROTHER. 

som and bear fruit for the pleasure or profit 
of man. 

There are souls that in their conceit and self- 
sufficiency are determined to find out a new path 
heavenward for themselves. They will be in- 
debted to no man, not even the Man Christ Jesus ! 
The old trodden path of repentance and humility 
is not to their taste. They will not even knock at 
the gate of heaven. They would step boldly in, 
claiming a right there, on account of their human 
perfection. This is, alas ! a well-known class of 
so-called seekers of truth. 

There are persons who close their eyes to the 
light because their inmost heart cannot bear its 
pure rays. The lives of such persons generally 
show in the end why they have been so averse 
from the exactions of the pure law of God. They 
have set their faces towards the outer darkness 
of those who turn their backs on God and holi- 
ness. On this form of unbelief we must look 
with deep pain and sorrowful pity. From the 
baleful influence of such unbelievers we would 
gladly shield those puzzled doubters who would 
willingly find themselves in the ways of faith 
and peace. 

The tender dealing of our Lord with Nico- 
demus comes with its comforting whispers, when 
we think of those seekers of truth among the 
wise heathen philosophers of old. There may 



MINISTERING. 79 

even now be lovers of truth, justice, and purity, 
far from the light of the Everlasting Gospel, 
who may be beloved by Him who opened the 
eyes of the groping beggars at the gate of 
Jericho. 

Sometimes an experienced Christian finds him- 
self in a mist as dark and chilling as that which 
suddenly surrounds and bewilders the Alpine 
traveller. He seems entering into a dreary 
night of doubt and despair. Such a state of 
mind may spring from many causes. It may 
arise from some mere physical derangement that 
for a time clouds the understanding and dulls 
the heart. The yielding to some powerful temp- 
tation may have changed the attitude of the 
soul towards God, and left the voyager, before 
going steadily onward towards his goal, like a 
ship drifting anchor in a wild storm on a strange 
sea. Such doubts may spring from the slow un- 
dermining of Christian character, through a too 
eager pursuit of lawful pleasures, or the chilling 
influence of a worldly atmosphere become con- 
genial, or from the cruel seeds of unbelief, wil- 
fully and skilfully planted by some daring 
infidel. 

From whatever causes such a state of mind may 
arise, it is night to the soul. In such a night 
there is but one help, — to go simply to Jesus, 
like a little child, telling Him of the trial, and 



80 OUR ELDER BROTHER. 

seeking His all-powerful aid. This is no real 
unbelief, to be met by the examining of evi- 
dences and the study of Church history. This 
doubt is pain, as of estrangement from a dear 
friend. It is not disbelief in the existence of 
that friend, or of his claims to confidence and 
affection. Such a suffering Christian, in the 
midst of his confusion of mind, would endure 
much persecution, and perhaps even offer his 
life, rather than range himself among the ene- 
mies of the cause of Christ. If such doubters 
truly go to Jesus, in their night of trouble, there 
is a bright dawn in store for them. Repentant, 
forgiven, received again to the near companion- 
ship of the Master, they will go onward and 
upward, fearing nothing so much as the possi- 
bility of losing in any way the light of His coun- 
tenance whose presence is fulness of joy. 



TIEED. 

Jesus being wearied with His journey. — John iv. 6. 

IT is astonishing how little we hear of the 
personal discomforts to which our Lord was 
exposed. He too could be weary in this toiling 
world. He too could long for rest, and seek the 
quiet mountain-top or the desert place to be 
alone with His Father. 

There is a weariness which overtakes us all at 
times, in the midst of active life, and prompts 
an overpowering desire to get somewhere, to 
have some refuge, if but for a day, when not 
even an hour of solitary peace can we dare to 
claim. Such is often the weariness of the mother, 
with many young children about her. She is 
exhausted by nights of wakefulness beside an 
uneasy babe, or by watching some little sufferer, 
or by the very restlessness of the ever-moving, 
ever-changing group about her, of which she 
must be the centre and the irresistible attraction. 

There is no escape for you, faithful mother, 
but there is a loving smile of approval for you 

6 



82 OUR ELDER BROTHER. 

that could cheer and strengthen you, if you could 
see it with your mortal eyes. Jesus, who so 
loved little children, loves them still, and values 
your every effort and sacrifice. He does not 
think, because you go over the same duties day 
by day, that they cost you nothing. He knows 
your every weary moment, and all your throng- 
ing cares. Let His love and sympathy help you 
to go bravely on. The time is coming when the 
little ones about you will be strong to love and 
strong to labor. Even here, on earth, a great 
reward may be in store for you! 

And you, busy father, sacrificing personal am- 
bition and even the exercise of your highest 
mental gifts, in some plodding calling, where 
you win daily bread for your dear ones, what 
wonder that you are sometimes wearied with 
the journey ! Sit down, then, by the well whence 
the living waters are to be drawn. Look to your 
Heavenly Friend ! You are doing the work He 
has planned for you, and you have His approval. 
Your character is strengthened and ennobled by 
your every sacrifice. You have a present reward 
in the tender love and unbounded confidence of 
the helpless group entrusted to your care, and a 
better reward, when your earthly labors are 
over. 

There are many weary pilgrims, but all may 
have the same consolation. Life is indeed a 



MINISTERING. 83 

journey, but, unlike most other journeys, it has 
no fixed, known, and clearly appointed close. It 
may last for long years, it may end to-night ! 

What does the traveller in a strange country 
care for passing inconveniences when he fancies 
he is near his last station. He keeps watchful 
and ready for the change. His ears are open 
for the words that may be the summons for him 
to leave his fellow-passengers and the comforts 
and discomforts of the way. Perhaps there is 
some friend gone before who is waiting to meet 
him, and eye to eye will flash love, and hand 
will grasp hand, telling of unchanging affection. 
What, indeed, to such a traveller are the small 
annoyances by the way? 

"Gird up the loins of your mind," pilgrims 
to a better Home ! Think of Him who has pre- 
pared a place for you in the heavenly mansions. 
Live much in the thought of the Friend who is 
to meet you "beyond the river. 7 ' So will you be 
insensibly fashioned into His likeness and into 
fitness for the Home which awaits you when 
life's long journey is over! 



VI. 

RELATIVES. 

And when Jesus was come into Peter's house, He saw his 
wife's mother laid and sick of a fever. — Matt. viii. 14. 

OTJB relatives by birth we have generally 
known from childhood. The familiar in- 
tercourse of years has created in us that sort of 
attachment that comes from mutual interests and 
the exchange of necessary courtesies and kind- 
ness, even where there is no real congeniality 
and no very near blood relationship. 

We accept as we must the members of the 
home circle, love them heartily and naturally in 
most cases, and in all make the best of them. 
Family quarrels are universally condemned, and 
there is fixed upon them a certain measure of dis- 
grace. The Scriptures go farther and enforce 
family affection as a duty, as well as a privilege 
and a source of the purest and most lasting 
earthly joy. 

As by common consent, mankind rebels more 
stubbornly against the uncongenial relatives with 



. MINISTERING. 85 

whom human beings become connected by mar- 
riage. There is a noble as well as an unworthy 
ground for this difficulty. The loving, loyal 
heart is repulsed by the idea that persons, often 
utter strangers till met at the wedding feast, 
should at once be accepted on a par with the dear 
ones of house and hearth, linked with a whole 
past life, and near through strong and grateful 
affection as well as by the natural bond. 

There is often, too, a similarity in the modes 
of thought, the perception of duty, and the aims 
both for the inner and the outer life, in a whole 
family connection. The bride or bridegroom 
may be suddenly plunged into an atmosphere 
quite new and uncongenial, to have long cher- 
ished preferences and prejudices perpetually 
shocked. The feelings may be wounded and the 
taste offended because these strangers, who are 
at once brought so near, are themselves playing 
upon an unknown instrument, meeting on a 
familiar footing fellow-creatures of whose habits 
of thought and peculiarities of character they 
are quite ignorant, or which they are wholly 
unable to appreciate. 

For all this there is a slow but certain cure in 
the open-hearted willingness of the bride and 
bridegroom to accept their new relatives as they 
find them, not as they fancy they ought to be. 
As a plain matter of fact, these relations are 



86 OUR ELDER BROTHER. 

grown-up men and women not to be made over 
or remodelled to suit a new young member of 
the family. They are to be taken and loved and 
cherished and made happy, in the spirit of frank 
friendliness, in Christian submission, and in 
whole-hearted unselfishness, though it may not 
be easy to take at once quite near to the heart 
these strangers, who must be called by the sacred 
names of father or mother or sister or brother. 

These real difficulties in accommodating one's 
self to new relatives, which are so often met and 
conquered by the warmth of a loving, conscien- 
tious nature, are quite different from the cher- 
ished opposition, the sharp-eyed spirit of 
criticism, the mean, small seeking for oppor- 
tunities of difference, that may be found on one 
side or the other in the new relation. The bride 
and bridegroom are sometimes so selfishly 
wrapped up in each other that they consider the 
outer world only worthy to exist as far as it can 
conform to their wishes, or minister to their 
already abounding happiness, or at least not in 
any way intrude upon or diminish their unspeak- 
able bliss. Such selfishness at the beginning of 
married life may make permanent strangers or 
even enemies of those who would gladly have 
taken the place and office of near and affection- 
ate relatives. Even a mother or father or sister 
or brother, who cannot cease to love the selfishly 



MINISTERING. 87 

absorbed offender, may fee! repulsed and thrown 
off, and grow stiff and ceremonious with one 
who has been dear to them as the apple of the 
eye, blood of their blood, and heart of their 
heart. 

Into whatever household or family circle the 
Saviour has truly entered, the Friend of all and 
transforming all into His likeness, such animosi- 
ties, such opposition of interests, such bickerings, 
can find no place. 

We know nothing of the moral condition of 
things under Peter's roof at the time of our 
Saviour's appearance there, which is honored by 
the mention of three evangelists. That Peter's 
wife's mother was a member of his family shows 
that there was a strong bond of love or duty or 
congeniality between them. That the Master 
was at once taken to her bedside on His arrival 
indicates an eagerness that she should profit by 
the healing power that He was ever so lovingly 
ready to exert. Her sickness is called a fever, 
a " great fever " by one of the narrators of the 
incident. The physicians of our own day speak 
of a fever as if it were an enemy to be met 
and defeated by a nice system of tactics. Our 
physicians must often work in the dark. They 
know much of family matters, but they are not 
father confessors, to whom each member of the 
household may fully open the heart. There is 



88 OUR ELDER BROTHER. 

much that causes and sustains disease, into 
which the wisest physician may not be able to 
penetrate. 

Who knows what anxieties may have preyed 
upon the mind of Peter's wife's mother? How 
wild, erratic, and unpractical she may have 
thought him, to be forsaking his boats and his 
nets to follow the new Master, who after all had 
only promised to make him "a fisher of men." 
She w^as perhaps familiar with the household 
difficulties consequent upon his course. The 
future of the family perhaps lowered gloomily 
before her. She had a vision of the wife and 
children sitting deserted in a home of poverty, 
while the husband was madly following the new 
Teacher to strange cities. 

Who can say that Peter, with his hasty tongue 
that could even rebuke the Lord Himself, may 
not sometimes have wounded her to the quick, 
by a sharp criticism or a bitter retort, and made 
her feel that a home in his house was by no 
means a bed of roses. Perhaps she had no con- 
fidence in "this Nazarene," and had not cared to 
meet Him. Now she lay on her bed sick with a 
fever. She was not to be asked what physician 
should be brought to her side. 

Our Lord came like no ordinary physician to 
seek out symptoms and sound body and soul. 
He knew all the patient's pains and weaknesses. 



MINISTERING. 89 

He knew her trials and her sins. He came not 
on an official visit, for so much pay, so much ex- 
perience, or so much renown. He came full of 
ability to heal, and of love to understand and 
forgive. What a visit that was from the Great 
Physician ! He took the patient by the hand 
and lifted her up. He lifted her up, doubtless, 
both in body and in soul ! 

" There went out virtue from Him." She felt 
that loving confidence in His willingness to help 
which His presence seemed so marvellously to 
inspire. Here was just such a friend as she 
needed, one who came with a kindly touch of 
the hand, and a deep sympathy for her in all 
her troubles ! 

So our Lord is willing, even now, to come to 
every sick-room and every troubled heart. If, 
like the wise surgeon, He cannot always spare 
the sharp knife, or dull the agonizing pain, He 
can give courage to bear the worst torture, and 
to triumph in the sorest mental struggles. 

We need not say He will come to every lowly 
patient. There is no sick-room so dark that He 
is not already there, willing to give His won- 
derful light. There is no sufferer so lowly that 
the Friend of the poor is not ever beside his 
bed! 

If man would but turn in his distress to the 
Great Physician, not despising the means He 



90 OUR ELDER BROTHER. 

has graciously appointed, but looking to Him foi 
a blessing on all means, and for support in all 
suffering, what a different world this would be ! 

We read of the patient, Peter's wife's mother, 
that Jesus " rebuked her fever and it left her, 
and immediately she rose and ministered unto 
them." That was a sign of a recovery of body 
and soul that does not always appear after ill- 
ness. How often the contrary effect is produced 
by being the centre of interest and attention on 
the sick-bed and during convalescence. Who has 
not seen the faithful servant nursed through 
pain and danger to become an imperious mis- 
tress in her exactions, or the little child tenderly 
cared for by anxious love until it is a domestic 
tyrant? We may judge of our real gratitude 
for our recovery by the use we make of the life 
newly given back to us, or the lost strength so 
mercifully restored. 

In our extremity what weary watching fell to 
some one's lot for our sake! By what pa.tient, 
thoughtful service we were nursed back to life ! 
In what spirit have we risen from the sick-bed? 
Have we a more tender feeling for all sufferers? 
Are we querulously ready to insinuate that this 
or that invalid has brought on himself by 
thoughtless imprudence the pain of which he 
complains? Have we become so used to being 
waited upon that we have ceased to remember 



MINISTERING. 91 

that hired feet can be tired as well as our own? 
Have our hearts and our purses fully and freely 
opened to relieve the poor who languish in sick- 
rooms that are the family resort, the family 
workshop, the family dormitory, and the family 
nursery? 

"What a joy it must have been to Peter's wife's 
mother, after her sudden recovery, to be allowed 
to minister to the Master, as a revered and be- 
loved guest! Now she understood Peter's enthu- 
siasm for Jesus of Nazareth! She needed no 
longer to fear because her son-in-law had left all 
to follow the new Teacher. In His care Peter 
and Peter's house were safe ! 

We have not the Lord to minister to on our 
recovery, but if we have caught His spirit we 
shall find it a delight to minister to the needs or 
contribute to the joy of high or low, rich or poor, 
friend or acquaintance, as the opportunity may 
providentially be afforded us. We shall be a 
new source of help and happiness in the home 
in which our lot is cast. 

In the times that are gone by, family affection 
rarely allowed the sick to be entrusted entirely, 
or any more than was absolutely necessary, to the 
care of a hired nurse. Such a nurse was then 
too commonly an ignorant if a willing help, and 
sometimes an incompetent mercenary or an irre- 
sponsible drudge. Then it was customary for 



92 OUR ELDER BROTHER. 

friends to supplement the exertions of the over- 
taxed family of the patient, by sitting with the 
sufferer by day, or watching beside his bedside 
at night. 

That time has passed, and as to nursing, the 
trained and capable Christian women who now 
devote themselves to this self-denying occupa- 
tion can in most cases give far better care tc 
the sick than the nearest and most devoted rela- 
tives. This is now everywhere acknowledged. 
Yet this very fact is bringing evils in its train. 
The sick-nurse is so kind and competent and 
acceptable that the family of the patient, relieved 
in a measure from anxiety, and feeling them- 
selves superfluous in the sick-room, go on with 
their ordinary occupations, cheerful, and often 
indifferent and forgetful as regards the sufferer, 
who finds the nurse truly very agreeable and 
capable, but feels himself living in a dreary 
world, apart from all he holds most dear, and 
apparently as easily dispensed with as a worn- 
out glove. Such is human selfishness, that this 
may even happen in families accounted lovely by 
outsiders, families in which business and pleasure 
and self-indulgence are the ruling elements, 
rather than true affection linked with deep Chris- 
tian life. In such households it seems to be 
taken for granted that the sick-nurse has super- 
natural powers. She is supposed to need no rest, 



MINISTERING. 93 

day or night, no recreation, no cheering social 
chat, no friendliness, no fresh air. It is as if she 
were bound to perpetual self-abnegation, and 
almost to a slow self-murder ! 

These things ought not so to be ! The good 
sick-nurse does not come into the house to foster 
pleasure-seeking, worldliness, and selfishness. 

There is a ministry for all of us in our homes 
and in the homes of others, in sickness and in 
health, in joy and in sorrow. Not sickness 
alone, not recovery, can teach us this lesson. 
The Lord Jesus must take us by the hand and 
lift us up, and give us of His loving spirit, and 
then we shall arise and minister unto our fellows, 
after His example and in His name. 



VII. 
FAULTS. 

Why are ye so fearful ? — Mark iv. 40. 

NEVER does our Lord seem nearer to us than 
when He lies in the little vessel on the Sea 
of Galilee, fast asleep, like one of ourselves. 
From the deep rest of weary human nature, He 
is not even awakened by the roar of the tempest 
about Him. We see in Him here our Brother, 
who could suffer fatigue of mind and body, and 
sink overpowered into the forgetfulness and un- 
consciousness of kindly sleep. So it seems to us 
now, but to the disciples that sleep was almost 
like wilful desertion. Jesus was their Master, 
to whom they looked for help and guidance. In 
His power they were beginning to have unlimited 
trust. Now He had laid aside his sceptre, and 
seemed lost to them in the hour of trouble, even 
unmindful of them and their needs. They dared 
to wake Him, and address to Him the words of 
wounded confidence and almost indignant re- 
proach. 

The majesty and power of our Lord crowned 



MINISTERING. 95 

Him on awaking. The winds and the waves 
were hushed into subjection. They who had 
presumed to rouse Him from His quiet sleep 
felt Him now an august stranger, and whispered 
timidly together, " What manner of man is this, 
that even the wind and the sea obey Him?" 

What did the disciples expect the Master to 
do, when they roused Him to come to their aid, 
if they were so astonished at the execution of 
His sovereign power? 

What a picture we have of the Church of God, 
and even of individual believers, in those few 
men in the storm -tossed ship! "They cried 
unto the Lord in their distress," but were filled 
with stupefied surprise and timid awe when He 
heard and answered their prayer. 

There are few ways in which Christians show 
more their lack of real faith than when they stand 
astonished at a direct answer to their prayers. 
In our troubles we besiege Heaven for help and 
add in our hearts if not with our lips, "Master, 
carest thou not if we perish?" Yet we are 
hushed into convicted silence when the sudden 
answer to our prayers overtakes us, perhaps as 
we rise from our knees. 

Real answers to prayers are not only a rebuke 
to our latent unbelief, but a strengthening as 
well to our atom of faith. We have seen what 
manner of being our Lord is, and more truly 



96 OUR ELDER BROTHER. 

than ever before rely on Him with childlike 
trust. In such a response to our cry ; we have 
perhaps a secret with Him alone, which we 
should shrink, it may be, from naming to mother 
or sister or brother, yet it sends us singing on 
our way. 

It is not to all Christians that the question 
"Why are ye so fearful?" can with the same 
pertinence be addressed. Individual character 
sets its stamp on the spiritual life, its joys and 
its difficulties and its temptations. Peter is born 
Peter, if not in name, and John is born John. 
We come into the world with fixed character- 
istics, and probably each with his peculiar bias, 
his weak places, where the enemy may most 
readily make his assault. 

This fact is most important for the educator to 
remember, be he parent or teacher, A child's 
natural gifts and tendencies must be patiently 
and prayerfully studied, by one who would guide 
and direct and develop him aright. There may 
be points of character about which even the 
mother of a boy may be long in doubt, while 
others will be clear to her from his earliest 
infancy. 

There is no characteristic that shows itself 
more early than timidity. Some children, from 
the dawn of opening consciousness, are fearless 
and confiding and friendly. Others shrink from 



MINISTERING. 97 

strangers with a quivering lip, and lay the head 
on the mother's shoulder, they know not why. 
Some baby faces will cloud and fill with tears at 
a harsh word, while others will answer frown 
with frown, and hasty reproof with irritated 
opposition. How few children have pains early 
taken with them to soften and modify their 
dangerous peculiarities ! 

There is a time when a human being comes 
into a new possession of himself, as something 
given back to him, as Moses was to his mother, 
to be trained not like Moses for an earthly 
princess, but as a voluntary subject of the King 
of Kings. Bought with a price, we are no longer 
our own, but pledged to live in the midst of this 
evil world in accordance with the laws of Him 
who has bought us. The beginner in the Chris- 
tian life sees in himself an instrument to be used 
in his Master's service. What is the temper of 
that instrument? What is its appointed work? 
He hardly knows its strength or its deficiencies. 
On a careful examination he is discouraged, 
humbled, cast down. He seems made up of in- 
congruous elements, diseased, out of joint, im- 
perfect at every point. In the midst of this 
natural and suitable humiliation he should take 
courage. Every human character is an uncom- 
pleted work. It is not to be judged of until the 
last ingredient, the essential ingredient, is added 

7 



98 OUR ELDER BROTHER. 

to the composition. The cure for the appar- 
ent disease must be applied. The hand of the 
Master must set right the disordered machinery. 
The Power that is the secret of all growth must 
develop what is imperfect or existing only in the 
hopeful germ. 

Our very faults may be for us the source of 
our virtues, if subjected to the healing touch of 
the Great Physician. Have you an anxious, 
timid, shrinking nature that you think unfits you 
for a true soldier of the Cross? You are weak 
that you may be strong. Natural courage, head- 
long, thoughtless bravery, even to rashness, can 
stand abashed before the courage of a Heaven- 
sustained Christian woman. Such women, in 
the strength that cometh from above, can face 
danger and certain death with a calm and cheer- 
ful offering of themselves for a high purpose that 
ranks them among the noblest and bravest of 
earth. The fearful who flee to the Lord in their 
felt helplessness, have a source of courage that 
is inexhaustible. Let them take heart, and an- 
swer the self-reproachful question, " Why are ye 
so fearful?" with the comforting words, "That 
because we are fearful, knowing our own weak- 
ness, we may so flee to the Lord and trust in Him 
only, that no anxieties, no coming pains, no 
threatening dangers can disturb our peace ! " 

So we might make the round of human frailties 



MINISTERING. 99 

and shortcomings and special temptations. 
"Man's necessity is God's opportunity," here 
as elsewhere. Our faults, our very sins, may be 
made the prompters and sources of our virtues. 
The place where the fort was known to be weak- 
est has been made its strongest point. The 
struggle, through God's grace, with our known 
enemy, may make us excel where we have most 
frequently failed. The tried and tempted may 
not only be the forgiven and reformed, but the 
rescuer of the falling and the fallen, and the 
glad finder of the lost and despairing. 



VIII. 

MOUENEES. 

He had compassion on her. — Luke vii. 13. 

THE human heart has a deep craving for 
sympathy and compassion. Why else 
does the invalid recount his pains and the 
mourner tell her tale of sorrow though it costs 
her a fresh outbreak of bitter tears? There is 
a desire that others may know what we have 
suffered, that may even become a morbid craving, 
as in the case of a well-known afflicted child, 
early developed in the spiritual life, but not 
purified on earth from human weakness. As he 
looked at his little wasted limbs his plaintive 
voice pleaded, "Let my friends see my body 
when I am dead, and then they will know how I 
have suffered." 

We may smile sorrowfully at that poor peti- 
tion, but we all have within us the germs of the 
same spirit. Yet we feel it as a weakness, for 
there is in uncomplaining sorrow a majestic 
power that appeals to every heart. 



MINISTERING. 101 

Our Lord was ever ready to hear and respond 
to the prayers of the sick or their friends, yet 
His divine compassion seems to have been spe- 
cially touched by the silent grief of the widowed 
mourner beside the bier of her only son. His 
tender sympathy for that desolate woman was 
not only to cheer her .heart, but to be a stay and 
comfort for bleeding human hearts down the long 
centuries, until all the redeemed should come to 
that home in which God shall wipe away the 
tears from off all faces. 

"The Lord's compassions fail not. They are 
new every morning." He stands by the bier 
with the sorrowing. He still says to the eyes 
blinded with tears, "Weep not!" "I am the 
resurrection and the life ! " Here we have the 
full satisfaction for our natural craving for sym- 
pathy. No human being is so desolate or so 
isolated that the Great Comforter is not beside 
him. No sorrow is so secret that He does not 
know it in all its bitterness. No affliction is so 
crushing that He cannot lift up the head and the 
heart of the bowed mourner. 

The afflicted may cry out in his anguish even to 
the friends that would console him, " Miserable 
comforters are ye all." The words of dear sym- 
pathizing brethren may sound in the ear like 
dim, far-off bells, that summon him whither 
he cannot come. The voices of even the living 



102 OUR ELDER BROTHER. 

beloved ones seem outside tiie sorrowing heart, 
and powerless to hush its pain. The Lord Jesus 
with His compassion comes into the heart, takes 
up His abode there, and whispers a peace at 
which the world must wonder. He can give in 
the darkest hour a foretaste of the blessed time 
when "sorrow and sighing shall flee away." 

The son of the widow of Nain, waked from 
the dead, "sat up," and the Lord "delivered him 
to his mother." 

That same Lord will not indeed now wake our 
dead and give them bodily to our loving arms. 
Yet in His own way He takes our treasures from 
us, and yet delivers them to us again. As they 
are in their heavenly home they are given back 
to our loving hearts, — all blemishes blotted out, 
all shortcomings forgotten, they are forever 
enshrined in our memory. We love them here 
below, we cherish them with the love that can 
cover a multitude of sins. We see no faults, we 
remember now no failings in the dear one in 
heaven. We see him as God meant him to be, 
as he wished to be, and as he now is. He is 
delivered to us again, as one of the "just made 
perfect," and so we treasure his image. The 
light of heaven has fallen on the face that we 
loved, the heart that was so near to ours has 
been fully washed and made pure in the blood of 
the Lamb. It is as if we unconsciously accepted 



MINISTERING. 103 

this great truth, and from beyond the grave the 
departed were delivered to us to cherish in all 
his heavenly beauty. 

Ye make no mistake, ye tender mourners, when 
ye idealize and shed a halo around that dear 
member of the household circle who has gone to 
the great home above. He is so delivered to 
you that you may love him with the full, unself- 
ish love that forgets his human taint and sees 
him as he is, accepted in the Beloved. 

As you see him now, so should you strive to be. 
You have had your pattern delivered to you 
from heaven, where you believe him to be like 
his Lord, for he sees Him as He is ! 

Foreshadow in your relation to your living 
friends the love you now feel towards him whom 
the Lord has accepted. They too are the chil- 
dren of God, but not yet perfected, lifted above 
the struggles and temptations of this lower life. 
See them, judge them, help them, forgive them, 
as pilgrims towards heaven, though they have 
not yet laid down the staff or exchanged the cross 
for the crown. 

All who are spared to you are delivered to you, 
as it were, beside the bier of the departed, to be 
as tenderly ministered to as you would minister 
to him now if he were raised from the dead. 
They are delivered to you to have their fail- 
ings as patiently borne with, their trespasses as 



104 OUR ELDER BROTHER. 

freely forgiven, their affection as tenderly fos- 
tered and returned. 

It is a tendency of the mourning heart to 
glorify the lost at the expense of the living, en- 
compassed here below with sin and temptation. 
Rather let your love be increased towards those 
who are still left in life's rugged way. The word 
comes to you, "Weep not," or at least let not 
your tears be a veil between you and the friends 
still spared to you. Serve them with a new love, 
labor for them with a new gladness. Be to 
them a joy in all daily intercourse. Give your- 
selves to them anew as a companion sanctified by 
sorrow, to be more loving and forbearing and 
unselfish, more fitted to help them towards the 
home in which the loved and lost will be met 
again in glory. 

Nor are you to lack in this new nearness and 
devotedness to the dear friends that are left you 
the companionship of the loved and lost. He 
whom you call dead is now first truly living. 
He is now brought nearer to you, in a way, than 
ever before. There is a fresh, sure, firm bond 
between you. You are perhaps loosely, falter- 
ingly clasping the hand of the Lord here on earth. 
Think of that Lord as holding with the other 
hand the sainted one who has just come into the 
Heavenly Kingdom to walk with Him in white 
beside the river of the water of life. 



MINISTERING. 105 

Christ joins you. You speak to the Master, 
the Master speaks to him who has entered into 
his rest. The Lord sees alike your tears and 
his joy. The Master holds you both in His lov- 
ing keeping, — you for a while here a cross- 
bearing pilgrim, your loved one a sainted com- 
panion of God and the holy angels. 

Live near to the Conqueror of Death, who has 
the ransomed in His keeping. Weep not. 
Be patient and hopeful and active and pure, and 
in a few short days you too will have crossed the 
dark river. Perhaps even now its waters are 
rolling at your feet, and bright angels are tuning 
their harps to give you a song of welcome to the 
land where the loved and lost are with the Lord 
in glory. 



IX. 

SELF-DENIAL. 

I will not send them away fasting, lest they faint by the 
way. — Matt. xx. 21. 

OUR Saviour knew what it was to fast. His 
fast was a strong expression of His deter- 
mination to fulfil all duty, as well as to honor 
every outward form wisely appointed for the 
good of man. There would be among His fol- 
lowers individuals who must fairly crucify the 
flesh before they could be penetrated by the life 
of the soul. To such He would give an example 
of a triumph over the ordinary needs of human 
nature, through a struggle with its importunate 
cravings, a resistance even "unto blood." To 
each of us practically He so gives a timely warn- 
ing to keep the body in subjection by any and 
all means. 

Have we not, too, a word here specially to the 
Christian himself free from all temptation to 
drunkenness? May not the self-denial of one 
strong through the habitual control of the body, 
be a help to the weaker brother who feels within 



MINISTERING. 107 

himself an inborn craving that may lead to a 
destroying habit of vice? When more estab- 
lished Christians are willing to forego the plea- 
sures and elegancies and social amenities of wine 
at their feasts, or the stronger drinks at enter- 
tainments among men, it will be easier for the 
struggling brother, whose one indulgence may 
be the backward, downward step to a disgraceful 
fall, and a hopeless return to a career of sin and 
shame ! When there are hosts of refined and 
self-controlled men and women and boys and 
girls who dare to say, "I am for total absti- 
nence," the tempted will more easily do likewise ! 
How many a youth after a first carouse, a first 
humiliation through intoxication, would promptly 
resolve never again to touch the dangerous cup 
if sustained by public opinion and a large mass 
of consistent Christians, above all suspicion of a 
tendency to sink into a drunkard's grave. Who 
will set his face and his example deliberately 
against the practices that lead to the vice that 
fills our prisons, our insane asylums, and our 
almshouses, — a vice that destroys the brain of 
the thinker, robs the workman's arm of its 
strength, and brings poverty and sorrow and 
shame into thousands of homes? 

Our Saviour knew what hunger was as few ever 
can know it; He felt a tender compassion towards 
those who to any extent suffered its gnawing 



108 OUR ELDER BROTHER. 

pain. His miracles were not idle exhibitions of 
power. His touch was to help or to heal. His 
multiplying of the loaves and fishes seems to have 
sprung as well from His true compassion as from 
His willingness to prove that He himself, the 
Bread from Heaven, was willing giver of daily 
bread to the needy. 

It was His tender mercy, too, to show plainly 
that sources most insignificant could, at His com- 
mand, be sufficient for great things. 

What cheer these marvellous loaves bring to 
the anxious heads of families, who cast a dreary 
look towards the unpromising future, and can 
only lift up in prayer helpless hands that have 
craved in vain honest work ! For strong and 
busy hands, with only the prospect of an inade- 
quate result from their untiring efforts, there is a 
voice of comfort. Your humble labors may be 
blessed a hundredfold ! Your little store, your 
small success, may be so increased as to keep the 
"wolf from the door." Fear not! Trust in the 
Great Giver of Bread. 

There are persons who have been willing to 
take a certain number of days in the year for 
self-denial, in imitation of the example of Christ, 
after which time of seclusion and abstinence they 
have been ready to return with new zest to their 
ordinary life of pleasure and self-indulgence. 
This may be a useful exercise, but it is not a 



MINISTERING. 109 

faithful following of the Elder Brother. His 
sacrifice once offered began before His birth with 
the "Lo, I come! " and found its climax at the 
death on the cross. It is written even now, 
He "niaketh intercession for us," His lost, wan- 
dering brethren. 

Let us not consider that our self-denial, that 
any form of self-denial, can be accepted as our 
finished work. We are to make an offering day 
by day and hour by hour, through forgetfulness 
of self, and loving fulfilment of distasteful duties. 
We must deny ourselves and take up our cross 
daily, not merely at an appointed season, or on 
some great anniversary set apart for specially 
solemn observance. 

We perhaps shrink from the thought of this 
lifelong self-denial. How consoling to us in this 
prospect are the precious words, "I have com- 
passion on the multitude; I will not send them 
away fasting, lest they faint by the way ! " 

We have no hard task -master, no Pharaoh to 
wring the utmost from toiling Israel ! Our Lord, 
as a tender Elder Brother, would lay no too 
heavy burdens on the little ones. He appoints 
our sacrifices and our pains in a spirit of love. 
He would discipline and strengthen us and pre- 
pare us for nobler and nobler effort. He is ready 
to help when the way is hard and the courage 
sinks and the load is intolerable. We do not 



110 OUR ELDER BROTHER. 

labor and bear and struggle alone. He, the Great 
Cross-bearer, is among us and with us. "My 
Father worketh hitherto and I work " is still the 
gracious word of our Lord. We are working 
together with Hiin for our salvation and the 
rescue and the joy of our suffering brethren on 
earth. Fear not that ye shall faint by the way ! 
Ye shall rather come off "conquerors through 
Him who hath loved " you! 



X. 

ECONOMY. 

Gather up the fragments that remain, that nothing may be 
lost. — John vi. 12. 

ECONOMY is generally considered as only a 
suitable virtue for persons of narrow means. 
For the rich to economize is reckoned a littleness 
and almost a shame. "Let them that have much 
spend freely and even lavishly if they will ! " 
says the popular voice. 

He who makes the bountiful grain to clothe the 
fruitful fields, He who could say, "The cattle on 
a thousand hills are mine," the Munificent Giver 
of all things, could yet, when clothed in human 
form, issue the unexpected and homely com- 
mand, "Gather up the fragments that remain, 
that nothing may be lost." 

The universal neatness of the provisions of 
nature might lead us to think it possible that 
the Author of nature would unwillingly see the 
lone place where flower and bee had kept com- 
pany marred by the traces of the hasty meal of 



112 OUR ELDER BROTHER. 

a great multitude. There is, however, added the 
full reason of the command: "Gather up the 
fragments that remain, that nothing may he 
lost ! " 

The lavish multiplication of the loaves by the 
hand of the Lord was to give an abundance to 
the hungry multitude. He is no churlish giver 
to dole out His benefits with a sparing hand ! 

Yet the twelve baskets full of fragments that 
remained must not be lost. They must be care- 
fully gathered, for no good gift should be wasted. 
We know not what homes were to be gladdened 
by these remains of the feast. Our Lord knew 
what humble households would feed on the plenty 
He had supplied. He knows where to send 
succor in time of need. 

The poor must economize if they would not 
shiver or starve. Persons of moderate means are 
prompted to this prosaic virtue by the desire for 
more elegance or comfort, or for a provision for 
sickness or old age, or for the great pleasure of 
giving. To the rich comes the special privilege 
of economizing as faithful followers of our Lord. 
They must save, not waste, that they may de- 
vote as much as possible of their superfluous 
abundance to make comfortable and happy and 
good the suffering brethren of the Master. 

Few, even among the very rich, would willingly 
cast out wantonly as worthless a wholesome 



MINISTERING. 113 

loaf of bread, or a basket of luscious fruit, or the 
sheaves of grain fresh from the hand of the 
reaper. Yet how many thoughtlessly lavish in 
worthless trifles or profitless expenses the money 
that would supply food for a hungry child, or 
light the dark hovel or kindle the cheerful fire 
in the desolate home ! Call the little sums you 
throw away so recklessly nourishing rolls for 
starving children, or refreshing fruits for the 
stinted invalid. Think of the gratification of 
your expensive, fickle whims as the rent paid 
down for the houseless, or work given to the 
hands that can find no lawful labor to save 
them from the shame of being stretched out to 
beg. This will help you to practise economy. 

You may say you do give. Very possibly. 
You may give willingly and abundantly, but 
while you spend thoughtlessly, lavishly, and 
wastefully, you could give more, you are robbing 
the Lord's poor! Use what you have carefully, 
use it methodically, use it knowing and register- 
ing the channels into which your expenditures 
find their way ! You are but a steward. You 
must one day give an account of your stew- 
ardship ! 

When you save, when you gather up the 
fragments, give what you save. This is a wise 
warning for the prosperous. This is the full 
safeguard against the degeneration of the rich 

8 



114 OUR ELDER BROTHER. 

man's economy into meanness or avarice. Give 
what you can properly spare, is the word for 
persons of more moderate means. Economy is 
the duty of all ! For the lack of this modest 
virtue many a home is made comfortless, many a 
family houseless at last. Make it your duty 
before God to use the means He has given you, 
in the constant remembrance that He is the Great 
Householder whom you serve ! 

When you save, when you gather up the frag- 
ments, see that nothing is lost. These are the 
days when by the ingenuity and charity of man 
the fragments are carefully utilized. See that 
nothing is wasted in your house, your office, your 
workshop, that could do somebody good, that 
could be transformed or combined or purified so 
as to be a blessing to the needy ! 

But there are fragments not of the nature of 
loaves or fishes or any material thing. There 
are fragments of time to be caught up and made 
useful. It has been practically proved that one 
may learn a new language by employing for a 
year the odd moments of waiting or idling or 
dawdling. By care and conscientious watchful- 
ness you can learn and practise the language of 
prayer, on what you call your most busy days, 
and have times for meditation that will keep 
your eyes open to the spiritual world that is ever 
about you. 



MINISTERING. 115 

Do not sit down in despair in the midst of 
your broken fortunes. Gather up the fragments 
cheerfully, and begin again, like the disturbed 
bird, who lays straw by straw for a new home, 
singing as gladly as when he made the pretty 
nest that wantonness has destroyed. Begin again 
in a better spirit than before, trusting to God for 
a blessing. Let your foundation be on the rock 
Christ Jesus, and your watchword, "As for me 
and my house, we will serve the Lord! " 

Gather up the fragments after illness. You 
may not be what you have been, but you are still 
an instrument for the service of God and your 
fellows, — an instrument perhaps polished and 
sharpened by the illness that has sapped your 
once prided bodily strength. 

Gather up the fragments in old age ! You have 
not long to tarry here. Use your time and 
powers and prayers lovingly, wisely, gladly, and 
you may yet while you sojourn below be a joy- 
and a blessing. 

We are all poor fragments, unseemly bits, to 
be fitted together to make a great building, the 
temple of the Lord, His church, in which He is 
pleased to dwell now, and which He will glorify 
hereafter. Let us see to it that we have no un- 
necessary irregularity of form, no queer, ragged 
corners about us, that will not fit into the stones 
beside us. Let us submit to be hewn, if neces- 



116 OUR ELDER BROTHER. 

sary, to suit our proper place, and be contented 
with that place however small and inconspicuous 
it may be. There will be a day when our Lord 
will himself gather up these poor human frag- 
ments, the scattered members of His Church on 
earth, and make them precious stones in the 
new Jerusalem. 



XL 

OPPOSITION. 

Neither did His brethren believe on Him. — John vii. 5. 

IT seems strange that any kinsmen or friends, 
who had watched the youth of the blameless 
Jesus, could have doubted His divine mission. 
Their very familiarity with His daily life prob- 
ably blinded their eyes to His superhuman char- 
acter. It was hard for them to believe that He 
who had simply and humbly mixed in the ordi- 
nary interests and occupations of the carpenter's 
home could be the Messiah promised for ages to 
chosen Israel. 

There is ever an unwillingness to acknowledge 
the greatness that springs up at our side, and, as 
it seems, might as well have been our own as our 
more gifted brother's. With this doubt of their 
powers in their home, in their native city, in 
their fatherland, the great and good of all ages 
have had to contend. There is everywhere a 
strong prejudice against the homespun. The 
foreign stamp on a fabric makes it more eagerly 



118 OUR ELDER BROTHER. 

sought, be that fabric no better, or even worse, 
than that woven by busy looms almost within our 
own hearing. 

How often some far-seeing scientist or discov- 
erer or writer has failed to be appreciated at 
home, until some people of another tongue have 
sealed his claims to celebrity! How often the 
forerunner of some large enterprise or some 
needed reform has been greeted with the cry, 
" Behold, this dreamer cometh ! " 

The brethren of our Lord were not found 
among His first eager advocates, but we do not 
hear that His mother ever swerved from her 
deep conviction that a great destiny awaited 
Him. She was even too eager at Cana to have 
her son show the wonderful power that she was 
sure was indwelling with Him beside His loveli- 
ness and humility. 

How many a mother has so trusted her richly 
endowed son, and waited patiently for his hour 
of public acknowledgment ! And how many such 
sons have been first fashioned by such a mother's 
careful training, and been cheered by her affec- 
tionate confidence ! ■ . 

That the man Christ Jesus suffered from the 
doubt and disbelief by which He was met where 
He had a right to expect trust and allegiance, 
we cannot question. So He was a sharer in the 
sufferings of all who follow the lonely path of 



MINISTERING. 119 

pioneers in great and blessed works, and are 
scoffed at by their brethren as wild fanatics who 
would draw men from the old highroads that 
have been good enough for their honored fathers. 

Be not discouraged, faithful struggler for some 
great truth, or eager worker for some effort to 
lift up the fallen or succor the lowly. There is 
One who understands you and will crown at last 
your humble labors with abundant success ! It 
may be that here on earth you will never see 
your finished work. Be not cast down. Good 
done is never lost. If you but lay a strong 
foundation, the towers of some great and beau- 
tiful and beneficent edifice may lift themselves 
towards the approving skies when your body has 
been laid in the dust and your soul has gone to 
its account ! 

Alas ! there are many who claim that they 
are misunderstood and unappreciated, when 
they are chiefly laboring for their own advance- 
ment, and seeking for themselves the honor of 
men. There is One who fully understands them. 
He reads the self-seeking that mingles with 
their best efforts. He knows, too, perhaps, that, 
in spite of this imperfection, they fervently 
desire to be of use in their day and generation. 
That Great Master will doubtless cast stumbling- 
blocks in their way, and surround them with 
discouragements till their motives are purified 



120 OUR ELDER BROTHER. 

and they are made fit to be leaders in a good 
cause. Work on, tired laborers, bold reformers, 
but work as the bumble servants of the Most 
High, and you will be less sensitive as to the 
opinion of men ! Seek the success of your noble 
cause, and not your own honor ! Be satisfied if 
good be accomplished, if that be as the strong 
fortress on the rocky headland, while your name 
is but written in the wave-washed sand at its 
feet! 



XII. 

DEFORMITY. 

Master, who did sin, this man or his parents, that he 
was bom blind? — John ix. 2. 

Neither hath this man sinned nor his parents, but that the 
works of God should be manifested in him. — John ix. 3. 

TT7E hear much complaint about the existing 
VV unequal distribution of worldly goods. 
The possibility of a fair division of property by 
the State among its citizens is eagerly discussed. 
Could this be done, the greatest inequalities, 
and those that are the source of the most un- 
happiness, would still remain. Were there a 
certain standard of income to be doled out to all, 
the thrifty would soon surround themselves with 
added comfort; the liberal and hospitable would 
have cheery homes, a source of pleasure to others 
as well as themselves; the loving would give 
love and win love ; the virtuous would have their 
peace of mind, the true Christian his Heavenly 
Father and his home beyond the grave. The 
careless and idle would soon live in disorder and 
squalor; the miser would be miserable in the 



122 OUR ELDER BROTHER. 

midst of his gold; the cold and selfish would be 
lonely and deserted; the vicious would be tor- 
mented in mind and body; the unbeliever would 
moan in his secret anguish, " There is no God ! " 

Nor would the inequality end here. The beau- 
tiful would still be beautiful, and the ugly ugly. 
The old must content themselves with gray hairs 
and declining powers, while the young man 
would rejoice in his youth. The gifted would 
have the pleasure of using his great powers and 
winning the enthusiastic admiration of his fel- 
lows, while the stupid must mope in his dul- 
ness, and the silly be the object of contempt. 

There would still be the house of mourning 
and the house of feasting. There would be the 
glad family circle, and the lone mortal shut out 
from the voices of childhood and with no loving 
hand to smooth his dying pillow. 

The State could not make "the lame man to 
leap as a hart," or give eyes to the blind. The 
State could not make the deaf to hear or the 
dumb to speak. The State could not give to the 
giant or the dwarf the ordinary stature of man, 
or change the negro's swarthy skin. The State 
could not ordain that in any city "the inhab- 
itant should no more say, I am sick," or that the 
hungry grave should cease to claim its victims. 

There is a natural rebellion in the human 
heart against poverty and sickness and sorrow 



MINISTERING. 123 

and personal misfortune. There is an indignant 
desire in outsiders to lay the blame of these 
drawbacks to human happiness on some short- 
comings of the sufferers themselves or of their 
ancestors immediate or remote. 

Perhaps there is no kind of misfortune to 
which it is more difficult to submit meekly than to 
personal defects or deformity, none under which 
there is cherished a more bitter and discontented 
spirit. " What have I done that I should be so 
afflicted?" is the involuntary question of the 
sufferer. "Who did sin, this man or his par- 
ents? " asks the observer, from the superior point 
of view of his own perfections. 

The majority of the inequalities of life are dis- 
pensed by the mighty Creator. He knows where 
to place the soul here below, and with what body 
it should be clothed. Of this great school He is 
the All-wise Master. He orders the discipline 
and instruction as may suit His varied pupils. 
A profound belief in His love and wisdom can 
make the most stiff and stubborn bow cheerfully 
to His mysterious decrees. 

For those children of the Heavenly Father 
who have received some bodily blemish or defect 
as their portion, there is a special comfort in the 
answer given by our Saviour to the question ad- 
dressed to Him with regard bo the man born 
blind: "Neither hath this man sinned nor his 



124 OUR ELDER BROTHER. 

parents, but that the works of God should be 
manifested in him." 

Perhaps the world has never seen, more marked 
instances of the triumph of the soul, and its as- 
sertion of its superiority over the body, than in 
the cases of some noble beings afflicted with a 
personal deformity. Who has not stored in mind 
as a treasure the remembrance of great, soul- 
ful eyes, lighting the face and telling of the 
conquest of the spirit, in a dwarfed and hump- 
backed body? Who has not watched the coun- 
tenance, when the lips were doomed to silence, 
and the ear to stillness, to see it light with love 
and friendliness or glow with deep devotion to 
the Heavenly King. Here is a great and special 
privilege of personal deformity! It is possible 
by divine grace so to accept this outer misfor- 
tune that the spirit within may be truly sancti- 
fied, and honored to manifest that great work of 
God, the triumph of a loving faith through the 
unchanging days of a lifelong affliction. 

A misfortune outside of one's personality may 
be modified by time, or forgotten temporarily in 
some strong, absorbing interest. The lame man, 
though, must wake every morning to his lame- 
ness, the blind to his blindness. These are not 
misfortunes to be thrown off at will. There is 
no let-up with them. There is no vacation in the 
school in which they are the teachers ! 



MINISTERING. 125 

Blessed are they who can so take personal 
deformity or defects that they can make them 
minister to the glory of Him who can make the 
blind to see the light of His countenance, and the 
deaf in their solemn stillness to hear His voice. 

For these forms of affliction our Lord Jesus 
seems to have had a peculiar tenderness. His 
all-seeing eye could note each secret thought 
of morbid anguish or swelling bitterness hidden 
from mortal view. His hand delighted to give 
to such sufferers the sudden joy of a full and 
perfect cure. His sympathy is the same now. 
He will not probably remove the trial, but He 
can make it cease to be a source of cruel pain, 
through the sweet submission of a heart that 
bows lovingly to His sovereign will. He can 
open the eyes to the shortness of this earthly 
career, and the little consequence of the outward 
form of this passing tenement of a soul that is to 
be glad with Him forever. He can so sanctify 
and beautify that soul here below as to compel 
for it reverence and love, even from the little 
reverent and the little loving. The dweller in a 
body imperfect or deformed has often candidly 
said, "I count my misfortune as nothing, wrapped 
around as I am by love, and convinced as I am 
that I could not be happier if I had the most 
perfect body in the world." In such joy and 
peace the work of God is surely manifest. 



126 OUR ELDER BROTHER. 

With what thoughtfulness and love and ten- 
derness the sound in body should meet the suf- 
ferers under personal misfortune ! The right- 
minded must feel the blood boil, and the flush of 
righteous indignation crimson the cheek, when 
so-called Christians, — men, women, or children, 
— can presume to taunt the deformed with their 
misfortune, or treat them with contempt in con- 
sequence of it, or in their absence make it a 
subject of ridicule or mimicry, or give it a pity 
which is akin to disdain. Loving tenderness is 
due to him whom the hand of the Lord has 
touched. 



XIII. 

PAKENTS. 

Lord, have mercy on my son. — Matt. xvii. 15. 

And his child was cured from that very hour. — lb. 18. 

IT is not strange that our Lord, with His deep 
appreciation of the sacred ties of family and 
friendship, should have encouraged their natural 
consequence, intercessory prayer. Those whom 
we love we so naturally pray for that in all 
languages invocations of blessing have become a 
part of common speech, though sometimes so 
changed and distorted by thoughtless use that 
only the philologist can recognize them. To the 
Christian, however, the " God be with you ! " 
lingers in the " Good-by ! " as in the " Adieu ! " 
A large proportion of the miracles of our Saviour 
were performed in answer to the earnest petitions 
of the friends of the sick and suffering, often 
themselves beyond the power of even seeking the 
help of the Great Deliverer. 

Our Lord, too, here as ever, goes before us in 
the path we should follow. What a treasure we 
have in His great intercessory prayer ! What a 



128 OUR ELDER BROTHER. 

comfort to know that we were remembered in 
that prayer! " Neither pray I for these alone, 
but for them also who shall believe on me through 
their word ! " Not alone could our Elder Brother 
pray for them who loved Him. Even for His 
enemies we hear from the cross the strong cry, 
" Father, forgive them; they know not what 
they do*! " 

Thus encouraged, we may come humbly but 
confidently to the Lord, with our own eager, im- 
portunate prayers, for our friends, for the sick, 
the sinful, and the sorrowing, adding always the 
submissive " Thy will be done ! " 

It is with leaps of heart that we remember 
that He who is the source of bodily help is 
likewise mighty for the renewing and sanctify- 
ing of the soul. But for this strong assurance, 
how often Christian parents would be driven to 
despair! They feel that they themselves are 
like their own children in the care of their little 
gardens, who with tiny rake and spade can 
smooth the ground and with busy feet tread down 
the narrow paths. They can even root out the 
springing weeds, but until they lift up their 
faces to the father with the trustful words, " We 
are ready now; may we have the seeds?" their 
work has been at the best but a work of prepara- 
tion, which without help would have no satisfac- 
tory result. 



MINISTERING. 129 

In Christian education the ground must be 
made ready. Good habits must be formed by- 
precept and example. Special faults must be 
worked against, and, if possible, early eradicated. 
A reverence for holy things must be instilled and 
cultivated. The love of God must be set forth 
as a natural and joyous tribute to the Creator 
and Redeemer. All this must be done, but the 
Christian parent sees that it is but preparing the 
ground for the seed, — that something which is 
the beginning of a religious life, through which 
the child, consciously or unconsciously, gives in 
its allegiance to God, turns to Him in love, and 
desires to live according to His perfect law. For 
this we can pray with the hearty and sincere 
addition, " Thy will be done ! " for is it not 
written, "It is not the will of your Heavenly 
Father that one of these little ones should 
perish"? 

Here we have a strong stay! Let us come 
" boldly to the throne of grace, " sure that the 
fervent prayer of a Christian parent " avail - 
eth much ! " Such sincere, persistent, believing 
prayers must eventually prevail ! These are the 
prayers that follow the prodigal to the far coun- 
try, and bring him home repentant. These are 
the prayers that may even be powerful for the 
rescue of the dying sinner. No human messenger 
may come to tell of repentant last words, but 

9 



130 OUR ELDER BROTHER. 

the parent who has been instant in prayer for a 
wandering child may take comfort in the re- 
membrance of the strengthening words, "If ye 
shall ask anything in my name, I will do it." 

The stronger our interest or real affection for 
the child, the parent, the brother, the friend, the 
pupil, the servant, the stumbling, the fallen, 
the more sure we may be that our prayers for 
them will be frequent and earnest. Love is the 
great power for good here, as everywhere. Those 
whom we truly love we pray for. 

Let us never say, "I can do nothing in this 
world ! " The old, the sick, the little child can 
bring down a blessing on beloved ones, on the 
family, on the friends, on the native land, on the 
far heathen ! Pray ! Pray without ceasing, and 
many in answer to your prayers shall enter into 
the Kingdom of Heaven ! 



XIV. 

SEEMING DEATH. 
He is dead. — Mark ix. 26. 

ONLY He who is the fount and source of life 
can certainly know that life in a human 
being is extinct. The seemingly dead have been 
resuscitated, and even the supposed coffined 
corpse has awakened to begin anew the struggle 
here below. Where to mortal view there is only 
hopeless death God may see a secret living germ, 
that is yet to rally and be developed in new and 
wonderful power. 

The child who after our Lord's transfiguration 
was brought to Him to be cured fell senseless, in 
one of the paroxysms of his mysterious disease. 
The murmur " He is dead ! " was heard from the 
solemnized crowd. The disciples had tried in 
vain on the writhing patient their powers of 
healing. The father had brought his son to Jesus 
in a weak faith that uttered itself in the words, 
" If thou canst do anything, have compassion on 
us and help us ! " In the deep desire to have that 



132 OUR ELDER BROTHER. 

faith strengthened, he cried out with tears, " Lord, 
I believe ; help thou mine unbelief ! " Such a 
petitioner could never be sent empty away. The 
child might lie as one dead, but the Lord and 
Giver of Life was present, and the Angel of Death 
must fold his wings and yield up his victim. 

There is a death when the full pulses beat 
and the knit muscles are strong for action. 
Throbbing with life, in the vigor of his manhood, 
a human being may be " dead in trespasses and 
sins ! " Yet how can we, fellow-sinners, know 
when that awful point is reached when up in 
heaven the angels sorrowfully whisper of one to 
whom they would gladly minister, "He is 
dead " ? 

Of this we may be confident, we need not de- 
spair of any soul while it is yet in the body. It 
may yet be awakened, transformed, and sancti- 
fied by the same power that has plucked us "as 
brands from the burning." 

We go out generally to seek the sheep that are 
going astray. Our Saviour "came to seek and to 
save them that were lost ! " 

It is not uncommon to hear individual children 
spoken of (sometimes even those growing up in 
respectable families) as if they were already 
abandoned criminals, beyond the hope of reform. 
All physicians express their wonder at the vital 
power in a child and even a young infant, which 



MINISTERING. 133 

enables it to struggle through protracted, dan- 
gerous, and wasting disease. The little patient 
ordinarily recovers from its illness to a joyous 
and healthy life. The child-invalids, thank 
God ! are few. 

There seems to be the same tension, so to 
speak, in the souls of children. All efforts for 
the rescue of street waifs have an astonishing 
amount of success, considering the material pre- 
sented to be acted upon. The mothers and rela- 
tives and teachers who fold their hands in de- 
spair and give up the hope of reforming the youth- 
ful culprit, the son, the daughter, the nephew, 
the pupil, who has shown a persistent inclination 
to go wrong, should think of the love and pa- 
tience and faith of the true philanthropists who 
seek out the little ones of the scum of the city, 
and train them up to be, if not always faithful 
Christians, for the most part honorable, useful 
citizens, redeemed from a career of vice, the 
poorhouse, the prison, or a felon's death ! 

Never despair in working for children, though 
there may seem to be a hardness that nothing 
can melt. Love and happiness and prayer and 
wise discipline may yet do their blessed work, 
and the Great Friend of the erring will rejoice 
over every little one sought out and saved. 

Never despair of the reformation of the most 
abandoned sinner. He has been a babe, a child. 



134 OUR ELDER BROTHER. 

He too had a mother. He has a soul, he has a 
heart. Pray and hope and labor for him and 
with him. Conversion is a supernatural thing. 
The wonder may yet be worked in his dead soul. 

There are times in life when one is tempted to 
pronounce on one's own past personality, "It is 
dead ! " Great affliction may so transform and 
benumb the whole being that the mourner feels 
himself dead to all previous interests, and even 
lifeless and loveless towards the friends who 
have been next to the dear one who has been 
snatched away. 

Think not, say not, in your sorrow, that you 
are dead henceforward to life and love ! Turn 
to the Master! He can wake you from this 
seeming death. He has work for you to do. 
It may be well that you are somewhat weaned 
from the too absorbing interests of the past. Be- 
stir yourself for the happiness of the friends still 
left to you, and the warm currents of old affec- 
tion will spring up anew within you. Be willing 
to live, altered it may be, but not dead, rather 
more truly living, and better fitted to serve the 
Heavenly King. 

But another, a mourner over an inner sorrow, 
cries out in anguish, " It is my spiritual life that 
is dead ! What I delighted in once, is distasteful 
to me now. I see, I feel nothing but dulness 
and deadness and indifference. Old sins are 



MINISTERING. 135 

creeping over me, coiling around me. I am help- 
less ! I am dead ! " 

You are not hopelessly dead while Jesus still 
lives, if you will but turn unto Him. Cease to 
examine your own symptoms morbidly, almost 
willingly dwelling in darkness! Come to the 
love that waits to receive you ! For such as you 
the Saviour came. He bears the lost sheep home 
on His loving breast. He suffered that such as 
you might look and be forgiven. He is the Kesur- 
rection and the Life ! 



XV. 

THE NURSERY. 

Whoso receiveth one such little child in my name receiveth 
me. — Matt, xviii. 4. 

MANY a busy mother, shut off from the house 
of God, and finding it hard to claim a few 
moments in the hurried clay for private prayer, 
would perhaps be astonished to know how she 
is regarded in heaven. To the already, in the 
opinion of outsiders, over-full home she has 
lately welcomed the little babe she so tenderly 
clasps in her arms, with the Benjamin portion 
of love that was awaiting him. He is even more 
precious than her first darling, received in her 
untried and undisciplined youth. Then it was 
often hard for her to be shut up to the duties of 
the mother, for months deprived from mingling 
with outward society and enjoying the innocent 
pleasures that had been so much to her in her 
girlhood. She was almost afraid, too, of the 
helpless creature in her inexperienced arms. His 
every expression of discomfort, she feared, fore- 
boded ill, or was the result of her own unwise 



MINISTERING. 137 

treatment. Many tears she shed in secret, to be 
so transformed from the free glad being of her 
untrammelled youth. She almost suspected that 
not even her devoted husband appreciated the 
sacrifice she was making. Now self is dead 
within her, and maternal love has its sweet tri- 
umph. Such love has its own reward in the 
tender joy with which she presses this last best 
gift to her motherly heart. She has received her 
little one in Jesus' name, and she means to rear 
him faithfully as a child of God. He has 
brought her a new blessing from Heaven! 

The Christian nursery-maid is doubtless hon- 
ored with the approving smile of the Master. 
She looks upon the little ones confided to her 
care as given her by the Lord, to watch over for 
His sake. She wraps them round with tender, 
conscientious care, as ever in the presence of the 
Lord Christ. She gives them the cheerful sunshine 
of an affectionate, contented spirit. She folds 
their little hands in prayer, she answers their 
crude questioning with the wisdom that comes 
from above. She leads them to look up lovingly 
to the Good Shepherd. She feeds His lambs, 
and is herself abundantly fed of Him. The aged 
Lord Shaftesbury liked to acknowledge that he 
owed his lifelong interest in active benevo- 
lence to the influence of a nursery-maid, whom 
he never saw after he was seven years of age. 



138 OUR ELDER BROTHER. 

She passed into the heavenly kingdom or into 
some other home to sow her seed, but her work 
in the heart of her little charge was to be for 
more than an ordinary lifetime a blessing to 
many of Christ's suffering and wandering chil- 
dren. Lo ! the nurses who receive little ones in 
Jesus' name are indeed receiving Him ! They 
bless and are blessed ! 

How many Christians who could welcome to 
their homes little children in the name of Christ 
trifle away their lives in objectless dawdling or 
belittling diversions ! How many a lonely woman 
lavishes her affectionate care on some four-footed 
pet, while in her neighborhood little pairs of 
human feet are starting helpless on their earthly 
pilgrimage, to be bruised by the way, or to 
wander in desolate paths ending in the down- 
ward road of open sin. Ye mourners, shutting 
yourselves up to uncomforted sorrow, ye lonely 
women who crave something to love, take one 
little one in Jesus' name! Rescue it from want 
and sin, and lead it tenderly in the heavenly way ! 
If you cannot have such a child in your own home, 
find some upright, honest family who will do the 
work for you for a fair compensation. See your 
little charge often, love it, and surely new joy 
will fill your heart, something of the gladness 
and peace that must come to all who receive a 
little child in the name of Christ. 



XVI. . 
THE CAPITAL. 

He beheld the city and wept over it. — Luke xix. 41. 

THE capital city is ever the type and represen- 
tative of the whole nation. Here all that 
is best and all that is worst are usually found 
centred. Here we find the most culture and re- 
finement and magnificence. Here dwell the 
gifted men, the ruling spirits, and the head of 
the government, crowned or uncrowned. Here 
are the splendid buildings and the treasures of 
art. Here are the great benevolent institutions 
and the organized efforts for the poor and erring. 
Here are the large givers and the devoted work- 
ers. Here are the great churches and the elo- 
quent preachers. 

In the capital city, alas ! sin stands forward 
unblushing. Here we have masses of human be- 
ings living more like beasts than men. Here 
we have want and squalor and crime. Here we 
have the human heart more cold and fierce than 



140 OUR ELDER BROTHER. 

the tiger's, sometimes through the selfishness of 
unlimited prosperity, sometimes through the 
hard experiences of bitter need. Here we have 
monster frauds and evil living in high places. 
Here we have drunkenness in the midst of splen- 
dor. Here we have great names and long purses 
silencing the voice of public indignation. Here 
we must have the strong military force to keep 
down the possible mob, the great hospitals to 
receive the many sick, the giant prisons to shut 
out from society the criminals it nurtures in its 
midst. All this, too, in Christian countries ! 
We hide our faces for very shame ! 

Nor can the quiet dwellers in country places 
stand in conscious innocence and cast the stones 
of condemnation on the citizens of a great metrop- 
olis. Whose children are they who build up 
the city and keep it full with their annual influx? 
Whence came that man whom high position could 
not keep from crime ? " From my home ! " says 
some aged owner of a beautiful rural home, 
where nature is developed to the utmost beauty, 
but the God of nature is forgotten. Whose son 
was it who last entered that prison door a con- 
demned criminal? "My son!" cries the hard- 
handed peasant, in whose cottage the voice of 
prayer was never heard, and where riches were 
counted the highest earthly blessing. The nation 
cannot cast oft' the shame of the deeds of its capi- 



MINISTERING. 141 

tal city, which is but a concentrated development 
of itself ! 

In common parlance the city comes to be a 
synonym for folly, extravagance, and temptation. 
"What became of that young man?" we ask. 
" He went up to the city ! " is the answer, and the 
shrug tells the story of temptation and fall. 
"Where is that pretty young country girl?" is 
the question. " She went up to the city ! " is the 
whispered reply, and pity and modesty draw a 
veil over her end. 

Not the city alone is responsible for the degra- 
dation that too often overtakes the eager youth or 
the adventurous girl who cannot be contented in 
a cottage or a country town. The false standard 
in the homes from which these young people 
come, the false view as to what is allowable and 
most desirable, blights the tender blossom before 
it is borne within the city gates to wither and 
die. The lads and unformed girls who go out 
from Christian country homes in which wealth 
and worldly honor are counted as nothing in com- 
parison with purity, honesty, and godliness come 
to the city like the pure water from the moun- 
tain lake, that winds its way to house and hearth 
to refresh and invigorate and keep life in the 
dwellers in the crowded metropolis. Ye country 
fathers and mothers, so train your families that 
they may go to the city as fearlessly as the mis- 



142 OUR ELDER BROTHER. 

sionary who trusts himself in a heathen land, to 
lead like him a faithful, useful, Heaven-blessed 
and Heaven-rewarded life! 

Let every Christian home, high or low, in the 
great city be a centre of virtue and holy example, 
and the young from the free country life may 
safely venture within its bounds, to live and 
labor, and even " come up " to the capital for sol- 
emn seasons of worship, as well as to earn daily 
bread, or win a wise experience, or drink deep 
of the fountains of knowledge. 

The city is but the initial letter of the whole 
nation's name. It stands for it, whether the 
nation will or not. If ever there should be a 
truly God-fearing people, the capital of that 
nation will be an earthly reflection of the new 
Jerusalem, and "the Lord God and the Lamb 
will be the light thereof." 

In all countries the capital city is in a mea- 
sure the centre of interest and population. What 
Jerusalem was to the Jews we can hardly imag- 
ine. Jerusalem was not only the centre of gov- 
ernment, but it was the site of the temple of the 
Most High, and exalted by its holy memories as 
well as by the nation's historical past. Not the 
sacred privileges that had been Jerusalem's por- 
tion, not its great buildings nor its greater hon- 
ors, had been able to save the royal city from 
a city's sins. Its cup was full! The time of 



MINISTERING. 143 

retribution was at hand ! Its horrible siege and 
utter destruction were present to the mind of 
Jesus of Nazareth as its strong towers met His 
eyes. What wonder that "when He beheld the 
city, He wept over it." Its certain doom was 
not to be averted by His suffering without the 
gates ! 

How does the same Lord look now upon our 
cities? — wherever the seething, sinful elements 
of destruction are underlying the outward pomp 
and magnificence? He knows when the bubble 
will burst! He knew when the swelling lava 
that had smouldered in the volcano's crater 
should suddenly roll down its sides, not only to 
destroy the dwellers on its slopes, but to be ac- 
companied by the hot showers that should bury 
in far-away graves those cities of old in the 
midst of their luxury and sin. He only knows 
what is in store for the great sinful cities of our 
own day! 

Individuals make up the population of cities, 
and give them their character. It is upon the 
repentance and reformation and godly living of 
individuals that the fate of each great city de- 
pends. This brings an imperative duty as a 
Christian and a patriot on every citizen of a 
mighty metropolis, and is a warning for every 
home protected by municipal law. 

The Almighty would have spared Sodom for 



144 OUR ELDER BROTHER. 

the sake of ten righteous men. Eepentant Nin- 
eveh was freely forgiven. Merciful and full of 
loving kindness is the Lord of Heaven. 

And what are the special sins of the city from 
which we are to cleanse heart and tongue and 
daily walk? Like the venomous snakes, it is 
more simple to name them than to destroy them! 

In the city it is easier to "follow the multi- 
tude to do evil/' harder to dare singly and in 
singularity always to do right. In the privacy 
of the crowded dwellings, it is easier to lead an 
evil life than in the publicity of the rural dis- 
tricts, where neighbor knows neighbor, and one 
man's business is the business of all. It is only 
each man's obedience to a conscience enlightened 
by God's law that can prevent the moral decline 
of the dwellers in the city's tempting crowd. 

It is to the outward advantages of family, 
wealth, and distinction that the multitudes of 
the city bow the knee. Has a Christian a right 
to give his sanction to sin, however honored the 
name of the offender? Has the Christian a right 
to reckon the rich righteous because of his 
money-bags, or to seek gold for himself as the 
one thing needful? Are fashion and pleasure 
and praise to be the objects of life and the 
moulding influences for old and young? Is a 
man to be an article valued according to its label, 
not according to its quality? 



MINISTERING. 145 

Has God a different law for a family in a 
quiet, country home than for the closely packed 
tenants of the hived palaces of the city ? No ! is 
the clear answer of every honest conscience ! 

Let that conscience rule, by day and by night, 
in company and alone, and the dweller in the 
city is as safe as the hermit in his cell. He is 
safer, for he has a better sphere in which to act 
out the great law of love! For his own sake, 
for the sake of his native land, let every dweller 
in a great city make himself an offering unto the 
Heavenly King, to live in purity, in charity, in 
unworlclliness, in holiness, in peace ! 



10 



XVII. 
WORKMEN, 

/ have finished the work Thou gavest me to do. 
John xvii. 4. 

THE workmen's question is often called the 
great question of the day. Taken in its 
widest sense it certainly is, for it touches the in- 
terests of all mankind. All are, or should be, 
workmen. There is no place for drones in the 
human hive! We may even with reverence 
speak of the Creator as the Master Workman, 
since all things created are the works of His 
hands. We have, too, our Saviour's words, "My 
Father worketh hitherto, and I work," as a still 
further sanction for the dignity of labor. 

It is a low view of duty which looks forward 
to middle life or declining years as a time of full 
freedom from all care and occupation, a period of 
which the daily expression may be, " Soul, take 
thine ease; thou hast much goods laid up for 
many years ! " From another point of considera- 
tion we have the same lesson. How often it has 



MINISTERING. 147 

been seen that the eager toiler with mind or 
body, possessing at last what is to him an abun- 
dance of worldly goods becomes, in his longed-for 
time of rest and self-indulgence, a lethargic, a 
broken-down, a purposeless idler, or a slave to 
the pampered body, now become a brutal master. 

No! .We are not made for perfect rest, but 
for action, for work ! 

We cannot always even choose the career for 
ourselves or our children. Nor have we the 
wisdom necessary for such a choice, since the 
future must always be unknown to us. Many a 
devout mother has set apart her infant for the 
ministry, and accustomed him from childhood to 
consider that his destined mission. Such a 
mother has too frequently lived to see that son 
performing his priestly functions without the 
gifts or the graces requisite for the position. 
Many a man has droned out his life as an un- 
profitable preacher of the Word, who would have 
instructed better by a faithful example, his hand 
on the plough, or guiding or constructing some 
intricate modern machine. That labor is truly 
honorable for which the instrument is fitted, and 
which is done conscientiously, as apportioned by 
the Great Euler of all things! 

God-granted ability and providential circum- 
stances hedge around most human beings, and 
shut them up to a certain path. Many a wilful 



148 OUR ELDER BROTHER, 

youth fancies himself, at the start, free to choose 
his own career. He is disappointed here, cut off 
there, disabled for this, proved incompetent for 
that, till he finds himself at last at a work he 
never dreamed of, and perhaps develops gifts 
and powers of which he himself has been hitherto 
unconscious. 

It is in vain that we imagine that we are mis- 
placed in life, out of our proper sphere, and thus 
crippled in our exertions and doomed to come 
short of our proper destiny. We are not put 
here simply to shine, but to grow nobler and 
better ! And who can say what is of importance 
in this strange world? One man's neglect of 
some simple duty, or unfaithfulness in some tri- 
fling detail, may be a source of appalling calamity 
and widespread destruction. On one honest 
laborer's conscientious work hundreds of human 
lives depend, on sea or land, in the factory, or in 
the far journey ! 

When we are discontented with our work, it is 
almost always because we are looking forward to 
a long, weary round of these uncongenial, un- 
imposing duties. How do we know that we have 
any earthly future? The clock may be ready to 
sound out the hour for our appointed change. 
The trifling duty which we are now despising 
may have a solemn, momentous importance as 
our last earthly act. When death pronounces 



MINISTERING. 149 

our work finished, the awful question will be how 
that work was done, not how it was regarded in 
the eyes of men ! 

And if our lives are spared, how do we know 
that this treadmill round is really before us? 
It may be that, like the man who is to superin- 
tend large mechanical undertakings and must 
therefore himself learn practically the first 
humble duties of the workshop, we, too, must 
begin at the beginning to be able afterwards to 
lead and command. Be that as it may, it is ours 
so to labor in our appointed field that we can 
lay down at last our little sheaf before the Lord 
of the Harvest, like the faithful reaper, who is 
no longer a servant but has been accepted as a 
son! 

It may be that in our humble daily work, which 
we think unworthy of our acquirements or abili- 
ties, there is shut up some opportunity of higher 
usefulness, which in our self-seeking has escaped 
us. There may be some soul, precious to God, 
in whose neighborhood we have been placed to 
be a comfort or stay or guide. There may be 
some doubter whose eyes we are to open, some 
timid penitent we should point to the cross, some 
lost sheep we should tenderly lead home to the 
peace and security of the fold. It may be that 
our faithful fulfilment of uncongenial duties is 
to give a testimony to the power of Christian 



150 OUR ELDER BROTHER. 

principle, better than ten sermons. It may be 
that our struggle to do well where we do not want 
to be is to strengthen our own tottering religious 
life, and plant our feet firmly on the Eock of 
Ages. 

Perhaps you have never yet begun your des- 
tined, your all-important work, ever to "work 
out your own salvation with fear and trembling." 
Perhaps you have never laid the willing hand 
in those blessed hands that were stretched on the 
cross that they might lead us to the Heavenly 
Kingdom . 

There has been but one being in human form 
who could look up to the Father and say, " I have 
finished the work Thou gavest me to do." We 
hear often of men cut off in the midst of their 
labors, leaving in youth or in manhood an unfin- 
ished work. So the world speaks, as if alone 
the sudden close of an earthly career caused the 
incompleteness of the work. Look at the aged 
saint who, after a pure outward life and long 
years of active usefulness, lays down his hoary 
head in the grave. Does he presume to come 
before his Heavenly Master as with a finished 
work? He too must bow down before the throne 
of the All-Perfect as an unprofitable servant, a 
helpless sinner, a transgressor of the strict law, 
a banished dweller in outer darkness, but for the 
one faultless life, the one all-sufficient sacrifice ! 



MINISTERING. . 151 

We cannot know the peace of that nature 
which in the presence of the Omniscient could 
say, "I have finished the work Thou gavest me 
to do." Yet we have been brought into brother- 
hood with the One Perfect Man. 

He has owned us in the words, " I go to my 
Father and your Father, my God and your God ! " 
Through Him we may draw near as welcome sons 
and daughters of the Lord God Almighty! Our 
poor deeds shine with a light reflected from Him 
who is the Light of the World. He has been 
pleased to choose us as His own, and will gather 
us at last into His Father's House. 



XVIII. 

CONSTANCY. 

Having loved His own which, were in the world. He loved 
them unto the end. — John xiii. 1. 

THEEE is a special sacredness about the last 
hours of Jesus among His disciples. He, 
who was the Lord from heaven, humbly ministers 
to His human followers. Knowing all their stum- 
bling past and their faltering future, He serves 
them in the fulness of His love, and for a per- 
petual example to all believers. We behold and 
wonder and adore. 

We may not comment on the condescension 
of our Master, but we turn towards the daily life 
that surrounds us, resolved to be more humbly, 
willingly, unselfishly, and lovingly ready for the 
modest help we can render to those whom we are 
bound to succor and cherish. In humility and 
in constancy we will try to love as our Lord 
loved, and to minister in the spirit in which He 
ministered. 



MINISTERING. 153 

Among the most painful of all the vicissitudes 
that try us here below are perhaps the estrange- 
ment and alienation of persons to whom we have 
been closely allied. This is even not impossible 
in the tie that is purely voluntary, which we 
ourselves form as the closest and dearest that 
earth can know. Where this tie has been formed 
between Christians who have the deepest conge- 
niality as to the great purpose of life, and its 
highest aims ana hopes and joys, this change is 
happily rare. The broken engagement is most 
common where the pair have pledged themselves 
to each other after trivial intercourse in the midst 
of giddy pleasure, or for the mere attraction of 
external charms, or from the mercenary hope of 
worldly advantage from the connection. Such 
ties, so lightly formed, are naturally most easily 
broken. Yet even here the rupture may be to 
the forsaken one a source of bitter pain. Some- 
times, while deep in the shadow of this peculiar 
trial, there comes a burst of cheering light. The 
world is for the time thrown into the background. 
It has proved itself uncertain footing and a poor 
reliance. In the midst of unreasonable doubts 
of all earthly affection comes the strong conviction 
of the constancy of One who, " having loved His 
own, loved them unto the end." Here is a reve- 
lation of enduring joy. Slowly but surely there 
is an alteration in the whole purpose and tenor 



154 OUR ELDER BROTHER. 

of that human life, and the sorrow of youth be- 
comes an inestimable blessing. 

Estrangement may happen even after marriage, 
when before there has been true affection or its 
deceptive counterfeit. Happy, then, if the joined 
hands are held together by soft baby fingers 
clasping them both ! Happy if so a common 
love, a common responsibility links again the 
hearts that were beginning to cherish mutual 
animosity and repulsion. 

It may be that love languishes in but one of 
the wedded pair, while with the other it is fresh 
and strong. Here, with ordinary wisdom and 
self-control, there is always hope. There is ever 
in love a mighty power. If that love is stayed 
on the higher love which beautifies and ennobles 
the character, in time it is almost sure to win 
the day. Let the wife, in such a case, never 
despair, but humbly pray and minister and cher- 
ish and wait ! 

But what if affection has died out on both 
sides? Here comes in the great word of "duty." 
Love is but one part, though the great part, in 
the marriage promise. Duty well done is good 
ground on which it is even possible for the ap- 
parently dead growth of wedded affection to 
spring to life. Perhaps the two are harsh, un- 
lovely, selfish, low-toned. Let them both, with 
God's help, try to be all that they should be. Is 



MINISTERING. 155 

the bond galling? Death may dissolve it to- 
morrow ! Then how will your reckoning stand 
before the Heavenly King, who has " set men in 
families " ? How will your reckoning stand for 
thought and word and deed? The highest form 
of friendship can never die out, though the 
friends may be separated by the wide ocean or 
by the long waves of time. The pen brings heart 
near to heart, and with perhaps the more open- 
ness when the deep-down congeniality is more 
and more felt as friends are so placed that they 
cannot share the every -day interests that first 
helped to unite them. True friendship declines 
but through the deterioration of character on one 
or both sides. Increased riches or other worldly 
advantages may till one heart with selfish pride. 
Misfortune may assail the other and open the 
way for suspiciousness and morbid bitterness. 
These sad changes must be watched and guarded 
against by the constant interchange of simple and 
even humble offices on both sides. 

Let the prosperous remember that with his 
prosperity his intimate friend should be made 
more comfortable and happy. This need not be 
done necessarily by direct gifts, but by sharing 
with an old friend, as far as possible, in a quite 
natural way the many charms and privileges of 
a beautiful home and its accessories, and a life 
free from pressing care. 



156 OUR ELDER BROTHER. 

Let the friend in the shadow of misfortune or 
limited means remember that he has still earth's 
best gift to offer, which no money can buy. and no 
high position can insure, even a true unworldly 
affection. Attention may be given to outward ad- 
vantages, but love is a tribute they cannot buy. 
The prosperous have their times of bitter need. 
To them sorrow and sickness come as well as to the 
dwellers in the humblest homes. Then the face 
of a real friend must be counted by them as an in- 
estimable blessing. There are times of contagious 
illness in palatial homes, when hired strangers can 
hardly be procured or trusted in the sick-room. 
Then only true affection offers its efficient aid. 
Let friends love unto the end, like the Master, 
and nourish love by acts of unselfish affection. 

Even in*families joined by the closest ties of 
blood hearts may be alienated or grow cold. The 
little feet that have kept step with each other 
often take widely diverging paths in life. Jeal- 
ousy separates brothers and sisters who have 
knelt at the same mother's knee. A conscientious 
and habitual effort to be useful to each other, and 
to lovingly share each other's joys and sorrows, 
may forestall estrangement and knit more closely 
the family bond. The simplest means for this 
purpose should not be despised. A garment 
made by a sister's hand for the brother's new 
baby, joy promptly expressed for the success of 



MINISTERING. 157 

a sister's boy at school, an invitation to meet an 
agreeable stranger or to join a choice gathering 
of friends, may give pleasure, and show the sin- 
cere wish to keep old ties strong and childhood's 
affection unchanged. Frequent letters during 
times of necessary separation, free, familiar let- 
ters, can keep hearts far separated by space very 
close together. This often costs real self-sacrifice, 
but it should be perseveringly and conscientiously 
done, if you would not have your distant brothers 
and sisters and their families become to you as 
indifferent strangers. 

We may not wash one another's feet in our form 
of society, bat we can strive by kindly offices, 
humble though they be, to keep near to those 
whom God has given us, and not only to love 
them to the end, but to make them feel that we 
love them, and be the happier for it. 

There are times when the strong faults of 
friends or relatives are forced upon us by circum- 
stances, or moments to them of overpowering 
temptation. They show themselves in an un- 
lovely light. They are perhaps harsh or selfish 
or unjust or grasping. We feel a chill creep over 
our affection, and we nourish a misgiving that 
they are worse than we had ever dreamed possi- 
ble. Now is the time to summon to our remem- 
brance the great example of Him who, "having 
loved His own, loved them unto the end." Now 



158 OUR ELDER BROTHER. 

there must be prompt resistance with resolution 
and prayer, or there will be real alienation from 
friend or brother. No slights, no suspicions 
should prompt us to willingly withdraw our 
loving interest from those who have been bound 
to us by the ties of friendship or the sacred bonds 
of a common home ! 

A widowed mother may find that she is left 
alone in her old age. She who has been first 
with her children is now fifth or tenth instead. 
She is tempted to shrink into herself in a hurt 
and wounded spirit. Let her rather unselfishly 
remember that if she were now indispensable to 
her children, as she was in their youth, she must 
soon leave them comfortless. That she can be 
more easily spared is the promise of less sorrow 
to her sons and daughters. Nor must she be- 
lieve that her chlidren are really estranged. New 
duties and new affections have become for the 
time paramount; but the old love is there, to 
bloom and blossom and perhaps come to perfec- 
tion beside her grave. If her love and influence 
have been worth anything, they will have their 
softening trace for good, when she lies low in the 
silent tomb. While she is in the body, let her 
be ingenious in finding ways of showing thought- 
ful love to her children, though they may seem 
to be unmindful of her. She will thus nourish 
her own best treasure, a heart full of love, and 



MINISTERING. 159 

perhaps keep warm their love in return. How 
precious to the aged mother's heart is the remem- 
brance that the Great Friend, to whom she gave 
her solemn vows in her girlhood, " loveth His own 
unto the end." He knows no shadow of change. 
Let her lean upon Him, and love unto the end, 
in those declining years of life, when a kind of 
torpor may creep over the heart, and the affec- 
tions be chilled in the sombre evening hour. 
The old must keep up the practice of loving, not 
sink into a dull, selfish round of little daily com- 
forts and purely personal interests. If they 
cannot do much for their dear ones, there are still 
some simple, tender offices to fill. They can 
have at least the willing ear to hear of others' 
joys and sorrows, the willing lips to speak sym- 
pathy and hope and holy trust, the willing heart, 
that while it beats can thrill its warm response 
in the spirit of devoted, unselfish, true affection. 
The unutterable love of our Lord for His own 
is a deep source of consolation in hours of spiri- 
tual depression. The Christian pilgrim feels 
himself sometimes so sinful and unlovely, it is 
hard for him to believe that man or angel can 
care for him, much less the high and holy God, 
who knows exactly what he really is, in spite 
of his best efforts to be faithful and true and 
pure. With a rush of joy comes at such an hour 
the remembrance of the loving ministry of our 



160 OUR ELDER BROTHER. 

Lord to His own, whom "having loved, He loved 
unto the end." The discouraged pilgrim cries 
out, "I am of His own. He wishes it. I wish 
it. It is done now, if never before, — His 
abounding love will accept me, and will sanctify 
me more and more. He will love me all along 
my uncertain and perhaps dark and erring future. 
He will not let me utterly fall. He whose exis- 
tence is without end will love me evermore ! " 



XIX. 

FORGIVENESS. 

Father, forgive them ; they know not what they do. 
Luke xxiii. 34. 

HUMAN beings judge others by themselves. 
Each must apply to all his fellow -creatures 
his own measure, a measure formed after his own 
limited experiences, outward and inward. Per- 
haps unconsciously, poor, short-sighted, sinful 
man would even judge his Almighty Creator by 
the low standard of his own heart. It is one of 
the hardest tasks of the earnest Christian pastor 
to convince his flock, collectively and singly, of 
the willingness of God to forgive the sincere 
penitent at once, wholly, and forever. The con- 
science-stricken offender will cherish the secret 
thought that there is some lingering grudge 
against him, some hidden record of his past mis- 
doings, to be sometime brought forward to his 
utter condemnation. It is not so that God for- 
gives, for Jesus' sake. Our Lord, by His great 

11 



162 OUR ELDER BROTHER. 

sacrifice, has fully redeemed us. He has bought 
us with a price we cannot estimate. The gold 
has been paid down that ransoms every atom of 
the poor dust of the earth, the clay of Adam's 
race. The love that has bought us was not 
blind love. Our Lord knew the human heart as 
no man can know it. He had fathomed it by 
His divine power. He had companied with weak 
mortals as His fellows. He had been side by side 
with them in pain and sorrow and temptation and 
death. He who could understand the horrible 
danger and malignity of sin could tenderly plead 
the ignorance of His enemies, as an excuse for 
the cruelty and injustice of His deserved death. 
Let us turn to our fellow-men with the consid- 
eration for their shortcomings that we have 
learned at the cross. 

Forgiveness seems to us a passive virtue when 
we have nothing to forgive ; but let us once be 
really wronged, and the passive virtue forsakes 
us. Forgiveness is a Christain attainment, and 
generally developed through struggle and prayer. 
The clearer the sense of right in the offended 
one, the more difficult he often finds forgiveness. 
What perpetrated towards outsiders he would 
have considered an offence without excuse, rouses 
his righteous indignation, of course, when he him- 
self is the sufferer, with the added sharpness of 
the feeling of personal injury. A deep Christian 



MINISTERING. 163 

realization of our own position towards our Heav- 
enly Judge, as blind, helpless, and unworthy, 
should soften our hearts into forgiveness of our 
erring fellow-ereatures. 

Much pain is inflicted, much injustice is shown 
by offenders so absorbed in their own selfish 
interests, so thoughtless of the claims of others, 
or so brutally stupid as to what may harass and 
wound the human beings about them, that they 
are hardly responsible for the direct injury invol- 
untarily inflicted. They are solemnly respon- 
sible for the unloving and unlovely state of mind 
w r hich makes self and self-indulgence the chief 
and absorbing interest of life. 

It may truly be said of nine tenths of those 
who pain and wrong their neighbors, " They know 
not fully what they do." This consideration robs 
the injustice and unkindness of its personality 
towards its object, and may help him to feel less 
resentment towards the offender. The remaining 
one tenth may be so actuated by wilful malice 
that the more pain they can inflict the greater 
their gratification. Such natures, so far degraded, 
can well call for pity instead of anger. Where 
the image of God is so defaced, the indignation 
of the true Christian must ever be tempered by 
holy sorrow. 

In the " short madness " of anger, cruel words 
may be said that break old bonds and leave 



164 OUR ELDER BROTHER. 

wounds that only the Heavenly Hand can heal. 
The fury passes by with the hot-tempered man. 
He can hardly remember what "he has said in 
his rage. He wonders that others cannot as 
easily forget words that he is sure in his calmer 
moments he could never indorse. Of him whose 
offence was so committed it may well be said, " he 
knew not what he did/' and his regret and ac- 
knowledgment may be frankly accepted. Yet he 
must remember that he is guilty of so indulging 
his violent temper that he becomes for the time 
like the irresponsible madman, who may in a 
wild moment become one of the race of Cain. 

When chafing under some supposed injury, 
some seemingly cruel word that has wounded us 
to the quick, let us look to it if there be not in 
us some peculiarity of character, or some cher- 
ished sensitiveness or suspiciousness of nature, 
that may make us susceptible to the slightest 
appearance of unkindness or lack of considera- 
tion as regards our feelings or our claims. The 
blame may be really in ourselves, rather than in 
our blundering, tactless companion. 

In dealing with children the plea of our 
Saviour for His murderers should be ever kept 
in mind. Parents and teachers see often in chil- 
dren faults and sins the dangerous germs of future 
crime, and feel the same indignation towards the 
erring child as if he could grasp all the evil that 



MINISTERING. 165 

is shut up in his hasty act in a moment of over- 
powering temptation. 

Such sin should be looked at, if possible, as 
it seems in the eye of the child. He should be 
tenderly dealt with, though his punishment must 
be in a measure in proportion to the danger 
to his own soul and to society from the per- 
sistence in the kind of offence of which he has 
been guilty. 

In the haunts of ignorance and vice much that 
is known as sin in the Christian home has be- 
come the natural atmosphere, and offends neither 
the uncultured taste nor the deadened conscience. 
This too must be remembered in pitying love, 
while at the same time it should prompt to a 
stronger and more sustained effort to open those 
poor darkened eyes to the beauty of holiness and 
the only way of happiness and peace. 

What can the most advanced Christian know of 
the real danger and the venomous character of 
sin? What are our downfalls in the view of a 
pure and perfect God, or even to the holy angels? 
We may well be gentle towards all the lost sheep 
of the Good Shepherd ! 

It is never to be forgotten that the whole 
church of Christ must be washed and made clean 
by the blood of the Lamb before it can be pre- 
sented before the throne of God, accepted in the 
Beloved. 



XX. 

TRUST. 

Into Thy hands I commend my spirit, — Luke xxiii. 40. 

THE suspicious despots of old dared not 
drink of any cup before it had been tasted 
by some submissive subject. Our Lord and 
King drank of mankind's most bitter cup that 
it might be freed from its poison, even for His 
most humble followers. He tasted death for 
every man, and robbed it of its terrors. He has 
shown his brethren in mortal form where to find 
their trust and help in the dying hour. 

How many saints on the verge of glory have 
echoed the words of the crucified Master, " Father, 
into thy hands I commend my spirit ! " In peace 
and trust they have passed from earth to heaven. 

Why is it that the faith on which alone we 
can rely for support in our last moments is not 
summoned to sustain us in the worries and emer- 
gencies that throng around our daily path? We 
seem content to leave the stars in their courses 
to the care of the great Creator, never fearing 



MINISTERING. 167 

that they shall swerve from their appointed 
round; yet we shrink from wholly confiding the 
details of our insignificant lot to the ordering of 
the All-wise. We are too much like the timid 
woman who, in a moment of sudden danger by 
the way, snatches the reins, stupidly fancying 
her weakness and inexperience her best reliance. 
Why cannot we trust our Heavenly Friend day 
by day and hour by hour, in the sacred confidence 
which says sincerely, "Father, into Thy hands 
I commend my spirit ! " It is the spirit for 
which we fear. We tremble lest it should not 
have strength to triumph over the bodily pain 
which threatens us, or to endure the affliction that 
is hanging over us or the humiliations and morti- 
fications that are in store for us. We fear the 
temptation that has before mastered us, the 
doubts that have once desolated our peace, the 
loss of the consciousness of the presence of 
God, which is our best treasure. We are har- 
assed by forebodings and distressed by cir- 
cumstances, instead of quietly, without anxious 
misgivings, commending the spirit to God, and 
doing faithfully in simplicity and peace the 
present duty that is plainly set before us. Here 
is the secret of calm serenity in the midst of 
"the chances and changes of this mortal life." 
This mortal life! That we are mortal, doomed 
to die, is sometimes the secret source of the 



168 OUR ELDER BROTHER. 

gloom that overshadows some sincere but trem- 
bling Christian. This may be, though our Lord 
has Himself descended into the grave that there 
should be light from the tomb, and hope in the 
valley of the shadow. 

Death is, must be, for the true believer, the 
rising of the Sun. Not that the physical sun 
really rises for us, but we are turned so that we 
see its perpetual shining. So is it with the Sun 
of Eighteousness. He knows no shadow, but 
the veil of the body hides the fulness of His 
light from our spiritual vision. Even while yet 
in the flesh, many devout souls have been able 
to say in the hour of departure, "Whereas I was 
blind, now I see." The burst of heavenly glory 
has reached the dying saint, even before the 
parting pang. The eye has glowed with rapture, 
the face has been glorified by a holy light, telling 
of a foretaste of heavenly joy in the Christian 
life's triumphant close. 

Why should we fancy we have a long journey 
to take to reach the loving Lord, whom we have 
believed to be ever at our side, and to whom, in 
the stillness of the solemn night, we have 
spoken, in the depths of our spirit, in voiceless 
prayer? Away with the thought that we are to 
be suddenly thrust into an unknown and awful 
presence ! " God is Love ! " The Lord Jesus is 
His express image! He with whom we have 



MINISTERING. 169 

walked by the way and sat down at meat, lie 
who has been our chosen companion and comfort 
and refuge all the days of our pilgrimage, will 
not be suddenly withdrawn from our side. It 
is the will of the risen Lord that we should be 
with Him where He is. Of His welcome of 
indescribable love beyond the bed of death we 
may be sure. Let us not fear the dying hour, 
but rather fear anything that may separate us 
from the present companionship of Him who 
is the Resurrection and the Life. 

There may even be no death awaiting us. 
The light of the everlasting day may give us 
a glad surprise, and we may see the Lord com- 
ing to claim as His own the most humble of 
His followers. 

How human nature clings to the conviction 
that death is to be prefaced by some sacred, 
hallowed time, in which the heart will be purified 
and prepared for the great change ! The common 
hours of this workaday world are in most cases 
the only time of preparation for the solemn 
moment of departure. There is generally an 
illness, trifling it may be at first, but growing 
more and more serious, with more and more 
absorbing pain, or discomfort, or dimness and 
wandering of mind, and then a short, hurried 
close, a surprise to the surrounding friends, 
perhaps, as well as to the patient. 



170 OUR ELDER BROTHER. 

The messenger of death may even come to 
the strong man in the midst of the struggle of 
life, and call him at once to an account. A long 
period of discipline is awarded to some earthly 
pilgrims, and blessed to open their eyes to holy 
things and their souls to a personal share in the 
great salvation. These are exceptions. The 
Christian's life is the only wise, sure preparation 
for the Christian's death. 

Men would also fancy that some great change 
is to take place on earth before the second com- 
ing of our Lord. He tells us that in the midst 
of the ordinary occupations of life, the round of 
pleasure or the stir of business, the sudden glory 
may dawn. When we lie down tranquilly at 
night we may wake to the coming of the Lord, 
"with ten thousands of His saints," to reign the 
King Everlasting. 

Can we say from the depths of our heart, 
"Even so! Come, Lord Jesus!" death has 
indeed no power over us, for we have already 
passed from death unto life ! 



<£rucifie&. 



Crucified 

CRUCIFIED. 

And sitting down they watched Him there. 
Matt, xxvii. 36. 

IT is only a kind of doubt that thrusts its un- 
feeling hands into the pierced side of our 
Lord, and puts its curious fingers into the prints 
of the nails. These sacred wounds are ap- 
proached with loving awe by the true believer. 
No human words, no sensational appeal to the 
feelings, can rightly impress upon us the suffer- 
ings of the cruel cross endured for our sake. 

We stand silent before the Man of Sorrows, in 
His hour of deepest humiliation. We bow low 
before the cross, in humble, voiceless adoration. 
Its solemn mysteries, that angels desire to look 
into, are shrouded from our mortal eyes. We 
can but pray that God will so lift the sacred veil 
that we may more clearly see and feel the great 
sacrifice in its loving majesty, and yield in re- 



174 OUR ELDER BROTHER, 

turn the grateful, willing obedience of a devoted 
heart. 

Let us read in faith and humility the Gospel 
account of the close of the finished work of our 
Lord. Let us strive to remember that those last 
hours are ever fresh in the memory of the Un- 
changeable. It is as if He were now willingly 
offered for us, for the sins of the whole world. 
So standing beside the cross, may our hearts be 
moved to new penitence and deeper love. 



fti^ett. 



I. 


The Grave. 


II. 


In Remembrance. 


III. 


Vision. 


IV. 


By the Way. 


V. 


The Old Testament, 


VI. 


The Sheep. 


VII. 


Daily Bread. 



i. 

THE GRAVE. 

They have taken away my Lord, and I know not where 
they have laid Him. — John xx. 13. 

HOW often since the weeping Mary uttered 
the words, "They have taken away my 
Lord, and I know not where they have laid Him," 
has the same cry come again from a sorrowing 
heart ! How many Christians have fallen asleep 
at night in such calm trustfulness, such vivid 
consciousness of the presence of the Heavenly 
Friend, that death could hardly have been a more 
wholly leaving of the soul and body in the hands 
of the dear Master! Yet, after a night of quiet 
rest, these very Christians have awakened in 
such spiritual dulness and dimness that the 
lonely heart has cried out almost in despair, 
" They have taken away my Lord, and I know 
not where they have laid Him ! " 

How blessed for such mourners is the thought 
of the resurrection ! Jesus is risen once for all. 
12 



178 OUR ELDER BROTHER. 

He is not now merely present for the few follow- 
ers who could see Him with their mortal eyes, 
but in every land and in every place. We may 
close our eyes, an unwelcome film of dulness or 
doubt may shroud them, but He is there, ever 
present and at our side. He is it not with us only 
when our souls glow with devotion and we are 
almost lifted out of the body by the sense of His 
nearness and abounding love! He is around us 
and within us in the mists of the early morning, 
when we, groping, seek Him in our blindness and 
find Him not. Perhaps He is looking with espe- 
cial tenderness on His darkened, fumbling chil- 
dren, grieving for the lost joy of the eventide. 
We may change ; our bodily or our spiritual eyes 
may be open or closed; but the Lord Jesus knows 
no alteration, no alienation. He is eternally 
the same. 

Let us comfort ourselves with these cheering 
thoughts on such dreary mornings, and begin 
anew our daily duties, counting no appointed 
path too narrow, since there, where He has fash- 
ioned our way, we can follow His footsteps in 
humility and patience and love ! We cannot ex- 
pect to be like the saints in the New Jerusalem, 
who need no sun nor moon, for the Lord God is 
their temple and their light. Let us accept 
gratefully the gleams of heaven that come to 
brighten our earthly journey, sure that if it be 



RISEN. 179 

onward and upward, it must end in the perfect 
day. 

Let us not sit weeping at the grave of our 
lost spiritual joy, perhaps the deep sense of ac- 
ceptance of our early discipleship. Let us rather 
turn to the loving Lord at our side, who is lead- 
ing us, as it seemeth Him best, to His Father and 
our Father, His God and our God. 

Those devoted women who were early at the 
sepulchre, with the natural longing to do some- 
thing more for the body of the dear departed, 
have their kindred spirits in our own days, How 
our hearts cling even to the poor fleshly tabernacle 
in which our friend has dwelt ! God has wisely 
doomed that body to a great and awful change. 
We must put it away from us. Some heathen 
nations have tried to set this change at defiance ; 
but no voice comes from the dry lips, no light of 
love brightens the dull features. Were it possi- 
ble to keep near us the unchanged faces and forms 
of the dear household companions whose souls 
are in heaven, how tantalizing, how agonizing, 
would be that bodily nearness, when hand gave 
no response to hand, and for the throbbing heart 
there was no answering throb in the cold, silent 
corpse ! Thanks be unto God, the dead body 
must be put out of our sight, and our fond hearts 
can only find their treasure in heaven. 

Even Christians will "seek the living among 



180 OUR ELDER BROTHER. 

the dead." How many eyes full of tears look 
down on the mound where the silent sleeper has 
been laid, rather than up to the heaven where 
he is rejoicing! How many mourners willingly 
linger in the churchyard to indulge and perpetu- 
ate their grief! Let them rather accept their 
affliction, and, leaning on God, who alone can 
support them, go forward as cheerfully as may 
be, like penitent, disciplined children who bow 
to the Father's will! 

Yet not even the poor graves of our departed 
should be neglected. Who would not be pained 
to hear the name of the departed lightly or dis- 
respectfully mentioned? Who would not be 
wounded to see his garments, his books, his 
favorite possessions handled like ordinary things 
of earth? "The grave is but his wardrobe 
locked." We know "he is not there." Yet let 
us pay due respect to the resting-place of the 
body which has been the dwelling of one who 
has been dear to us. Let us beautify that last 
earthly home, if we will; but let us remember 
"He is not here," is its appropriate inscription. 

When we think of our own departure, let it not 
be with any gloomy associations of the cemetery 
and the silent tomb. Let us rather look rejoi- 
cingly forward to the time when, free from care 
and temptation, we "shall be ever with the 
Lord ! " 



II. 

IN KEMEMBKANCE. 
In remembrance of Me. — Luke xxii. 19. 

THE thronging cares and pleasures of this 
life so fill the minds, even of the devout, 
that it is only by determined effort and some- 
thing like a fixed routine that they keep the 
reality of spiritual things frequently and lov- 
ingly before them. God, who knows so well our 
needs, has helped us to a holy order for this 
sacred purpose. 

We have the one day in seven, when the toilers 
may cease from their weary labors, and the anx- 
ious may turn from their necessary thought for 
the future. The stir of innocent social pleasures 
is hushed, that the "still small voice" may be 
heard. A silence steals over the busy, noisy 
world, and lo ! the far-off harmonies of heaven 
break upon the ear. Sweet Sabbath bells call to 
the house of prayer, where dull lips and duller 
hearts are helped to petitions for all the soul and 
body need. Then a priceless blessing falls on 



182 OUR ELDER BROTHER. 

the few gathered together in the humble sanc- 
tuary, as well as on the great congregation in the 
lofty temple. 

But there is not alone given the public worship 
on the Lord's Day as a reminder of holy things 
and a help in the Christian life, There is the 
Lord's Supper, — that simple sacrament, adapted 
to all times and all climates and all peoples, the 
rich and the poor, the wise and the unlearned, 
which when devoutly received, in remembrance 
of the Lord Jesus, brings its deep and special 
blessing. 

For our homes we have the commands, " Search 
the Scriptures!" and "Pray without ceasing!" 
We have the closet and the family altar and the 
grace at table, to give a holy flavor to our food 
and remind us of the Giver. 

Such beneficent landmarks are set up along 
the path of the pilgrim heavenward, that in the 
manifold interests of this life he may not forget 
its object and end, Such an outward framework 
we have around our inner life. Such a body have 
we, in which our higher being lives and grows. 
Such a fair cup is given us from which to taste 
the healing waters. Landmarks they may be 
for the blind, — an empty framework, nothing 
growing in it; a fair cup, the contents untasted; 
a dead body, quickened by no spirit within ! 

We may forget God in the midst of the sacred 



RISEN. 183 

order of His own planning. He may be remem- 
bered only in the dark hours, when some sudden 
and awful warning reminds us that we must 
stand at last before the Almighty Judge. 

How welcome to the soul is this holy order 
when there is the true sonship, the devotion to 
our Lord Jesus, that gladly accepts all aids to 
His loving remembrance and to the faithful fol- 
lowing of His example ! 

But it is not alone our spiritual duties that are 
to be done in remembrance of our risen Lord. 
Not so we cherish the memory of an earthly 
friend. The slightest wish of the loved and 
departed has for us the sanctity of law. The 
simplest act becomes a hallowed pleasure if we 
can say of it, "So my father wished me to do; " 
" This my mother taught me ; " " To do this re- 
minds me of my sister, my brother." So we 
feel towards our human friends who have "gone 
before us." 

Let us remember the Lord Jesus more lov- 
ingly and constantly; then will His least precept 
become a cherished treasure. How diligently 
we should read over and over His sacred .words, 
to see how He would wish us to live and labor 
and love ! 

How much would be left undone if we should 
ask ourselves, " Can I do this in remembrance of 
my Lord? Can I do it remembering His love for 



184 OUR ELDER BROTHER. 

mankind? Can I do it remembering His eye is 
upon me ? " 

Let us be living momuments in memory of our 
Lord, His character, His words written upon us, 
poor stones of earth, honored to be raised in 
remembrance of Him ! 



III. 

VISION. 

Then were the disciples glad, ivhen they saw the Lord. 
John xx. 20. 

HOW often after an ordinary parting between 
friends, the sudden and unexpected return 
of the traveller, perhaps for some trifle forgotten, 
or perhaps for a few more tender words, has 
lightened to all the pain of separation and given 
it a milder form. 

The parting between our Lord and His disci- 
ples was no severing of a common tie. Daily 
intercourse with a being of a life and character 
like His must have called out the warmest feel- 
ing of which our nature is capable. The adored 
Master had not been merely taken away by death. 
The Messiah had suffered a shameful crucifixion 
amid the revilings of the scoffing crowd. For 
the resurrection, the disciples, in their blindness, 
seem not even to have looked. The very women, 
whose devotedness kept them near their Master 
through all His last bitter pains, had no thought 



186 OUR ELDER BROTHER. 

of meeting Him in the early morning, risen from 
the dead. What wonder, then, that "the disci- 
ples were glad when they saw the Lord," unmis- 
takably living, triumphant over the dark grave? 

There are thousands of instances on record 
where, by the converting grace of God, wan- 
derers in the dreary paths of sin have been sud- 
denly allowed to see with the soul's clear vision 
the beauty and love of the Lord Jesus, and have 
been so transported by the sight that they have 
seemed for the time lifted above the common 
sorrows of humanity. Not so is the spiritual 
light generally given to the renewed soul. There 
are devout men and women who might truly use 
the words, "When Thou saidst unto me, 'Seek 
ye My face,' ray heart said, 'Thy face, Lord, will 
I seek;' " yet there has been with them no sud- 
den transition from darkness to light, but a 
gradual dawning unto the fulness of day. 

The child who goes forth in the crowded city 
to meet his returning father, sees with bounding 
joy the longed-for form in the distance amid the 
moving, changing throng. Now he loses him 
for a moment in this group or that, but still the 
eager little one presses on. His father once 
seen, he knows where he is, though he may for 
an instant be shut out from the loving, seeking 
eyes. The meeting comes at last, and how pure 
and full is its joy ! Hands are joined, and 



RISEN. 187 

onward the two together go homeward in sweet 
communion. 

Such even is the experience of some Christian 
disciples. They are glad, indeed, when they 
have their first far-away glimpse of the Lord they 
are seeking. He is not always in sight for them, 
yet they go on in the path of prayer and duty, 
now brightened by a clear view of Him who is 
the Eternal Truth, and now in dimness in the 
midst of this toiling, changing world. At last 
they are privileged to feel, as it were, a firm 
hand clasping theirs, and leading them steadily 
towards the Better Country. They may not have 
the brightness of the face of the Lord revealed 
to them, but they are sure of His holy presence, 
and walk gratefully towards the Kingdom of 
Light. 

There are other sincere inquirers, who, through 
some mental or physical peculiarity, or some 
spiritual discipline of the Great Physician, never 
seem to find on earth the Lord they are truly 
seeking. How great must be the joy of such 
wanderers in this vale of tears, who in a pure 
practice have sought the Lord, by careful inves- 
tigation, by loving ministry to their fellows, and 
by pouring out the soul in prayer, to find His 
sure promise fulfilled at the gate of heaven, and 
for the humbled pilgrim the blessed welcome 
ready, "Enter thou into the joy of thy Lord! " 



IV. 

BY THE WAY. 

What manner of communications are these, that ye have one 
to another, as ye walk ? — Luke xxiv. 17. 

HOW naturally we fall into unstudied talk 
with a friend who draws near to us by the 
way. He has voluntarily thrown himself into 
our company, and our heart opens to him. 
How often a traveller has revealed the secrets of 
his soul to an attractive stranger, met for the 
first and perhaps the last time, and yet soon felt 
to be a fellow-pilgrim to the same Heavenly 
Home. It is sometimes easier to give such con- 
fidence to a stranger than even to the well-known 
members of the domestic circle. For a person 
of a reserved nature it is sometimes trying to see 
daily face to face one to whom the inmost heart 
has been opened. The stranger who has heard of 
our trials, our longings, and our aspirations, goes 
his way, and we see him no more till we stand 
together before the "great white throne." Men, 
ill at ease in a godless life, have laid bare their 



RISEN. 189 

souls' secrets to a devout fellow-traveller, and in 
that one interview the good seed has been sown 
to spring up and bear fruit for the far future. 

There is something peculiarly friendly and 
human in the manner in which the risen Lord 
joined the dejected disciples on the way to Em- 
maus, and would share their conversation and 
inquire into their sorrow. With the same loving 
sympathy He is ever drawing near to us "by the 
way," whether we are alone or in company. 
With no human friend at our side, we may 
often, as we walk, have the sweetest communion 
with our Elder Brother. No one of the hurrying 
passers-by may know what manner of conversa- 
tion we are having by the way, but we may re- 
turn to our homes, not only refreshed by exercise 
in the open air, but by converse with the one 
Heavenly Master. 

The Lord is our companion in our walks when 
forgotten, as well as when remembered. How 
often He might address to us, in a tone of re- 
proach, the question to the sorrowing disciples. 
How much foolish talk, gossip, and worse, may 
be uttered in the secrecy of the public street, or 
in the silent woods, where eye need not meet 
eye, and the mouth may be prompt to speak and 
the ear to listen. It is in these unexpected and 
unstudied talks that the real person is more 
surely met than in more conventional intercourse. 



190 OUR ELDER BROTHER. 

The child prattling at the father's side in the 
open daylight is different from the same child as 
one of the family group, and often more free 
and confiding. The father reads deep down in 
the little heart, and is the better prepared to lead 
it to the Children's Best Friend. 

Turning their backs on the church door, the 
late subdued listeners start for their homes. 
Too many Christians act as if their Lord had 
been shut into the temple behind them, and 
could no longer hear their words or read their 
hearts. They who have apparently joined in 
prayer and praise, they who have listened de- 
voutly to the exhortation, have their thoughts 
let loose like birds to fly east or west, on a good 
or an evil errand. Their light, unprofitable talk 
may dissipate or blot out the good impression 
made in the church on some unstable soul. How 
great the responsibility of such careless trifling 
in the very shadow of the temple of the Most 
High. Happily there are Christians who leave 
the house of God deeply solemnized themselves, 
and unconsciously, by their power of sympathy, 
or through an unstudied utterance of their own 
holy thoughts, strengthen the impression for 
good that has been made on the companion at 
their side. 

Let us not forget that the Lord ever draws 
near us by the way, and has a share in all our 



RISEN. 191 

natural talk, Nor need this remembrance make 
us either gloomy or sanctimonious. He who 
made the golden sunset, the sparkling water, and 
the many-hued flowers that gladden us in the 
open air, would not cloud our cheerfulness, or 
even check our innocent smiles. He cannot 
frown on the kindly greeting or the friendly 
grasp of the hand at the church door, for He is 
the God of Love. 

To mourners and to all the sorrowing comes 
with peculiar pertinence the Saviour's searching 
question, " What manner of communications are 
those that ye have one to another by the way, 
as ye walk, and are sad ? " It is not uncommon 
for the human heart to be full of bitterness in 
the time of trial, or even of passing depres- 
sion. The ordinary self-restraint is relaxed, and 
murmurs and complaints flow spontaneously from 
the lips. Let such gloomy, desponding talkers 
fancy the question of the risen Lord addressed* 
to them in gentle reproof. It is in deep affliction 
that the rounded Christian life gives its best 
testimony. The hand that on the sunny path 
has surely clasped the hand of the Son of Man, 
is tenderly led by Him through the waters of 
tribulation. 

The gentleness of our Saviour's address to the 
unbelieving and sorrowful disciples should be 
imitated by us in all our dealings with the 



192 OUR ELDER BROTHER. 

afflicted. We need not be chafed by their repin- 
ings or their rebellion. Let it be rather our 
precious privilege to lead them lovingly to the 
Man of Sorrows. If He but join them on their 
troubled path, they will be sustained and cheered 
and filled with God-given strength to overcome 
the difficulties of their thorny way. They too 
may be witnesses of the power of the Great Phy- 
sician to give health and joy to the broken heart. 
Our poor faulty communications to each other 
in this time of our pilgrimage will soon be over. 
May we so speak that no word of ours, in glad- 
ness or in tears, may linger in a human heart 
to give secret pain or prompt to evil when our 
lips are closed in death, and we have gone to 
answer for thought, word, and deed in the sacred 
courts above ! 



THE OLD TESTAMENT. 

Then opened He their understanding, that they might un- 
derstand the Scriptures. — Luke xxiv. 45. 

IT is the fashion in certain quarters to depre- 
ciate the Old Testament, to enhance by con- 
trast the value of the New. This is much like 
taking away the foundation to increase the gran- 
deur and security of the house. 

Jesus Christ, as an historical character, must 
ever stand first among men. To the devout 
Christian He is far more, even the Lord from 
heaven. If we look to Him as authority and 
example, how definitely He fixes the estimate of 
the Old Testament. "It is written, " was for our 
Lord an imperative sanction as to all points of 
doctrine and practice, and even His strong re- 
source in the sorest assault of the tempter. In 
those last days of His intercourse with His dis- 
ciples on earth, when He came to them in the 
majesty of One risen from the dead, it seems to 
13 



194 OUR ELDER BROTHER. 

have been His chief mission, when they were 
once convinced of His identity, bo expound to 
them the Scriptures treating of Him and His 
great mediatorial work. Our Lord understood 
the meaning and value of revelation as no one 
else has ever understood them. 

They who truly love the Lord Jesus will not 
be robbed of the beautiful Old Testament de- 
scriptions of the coming Messiah. How the in- 
spired psalmist and the fervent prophets stamp 
on the mind the image of Him "by whose 
stripes we are healed," and who was "wounded 
for our transgressions, and bruised for our in- 
iquity! " We cannot spare those types and fore- 
shadowings that open the deep mysteries' of 
redemption, and give us the Man of Sorrows to 
lean on in our utmost need. We cannot have 
blotted out the record of the Lamb of the con- 
tinual sacrifice, forever pointing to the " Lamb of 
God who taketh away the sins of the world," the 
"Lamb slain from the foundation of the world," 
the Lamb to whom are lifted up heaven's songs 
of praise, the Lamb who, with the Father, is the 
light and the temple of the New Jerusalem ! 

We cannot give up the endeared and sacred 
names by which our Elder Brother is so impres- 
sively described by inspired historian and prophet 
and poet and judge. We cannot give up the 
story of those wonders wrought for the chosen 



RISEN. 195 

people of God! We cannot give up the triumphs 
of faith by which "holy men of old" passed 
through danger and temptation and death. When 
we stand at some perilous point in life, with the 
strong enemies of past spiritual conflicts behind 
us, and before us the wild waves of the threaten- 
ing future, how we welcome the remembrance 
of the deliverance of the children of Israel 
when they stood with the Eed Sea before 
them, and the hosts of Pharaoh in their rear; 
and yet the command of the Lord was, "Go 
forward ! " 

The threatening waters were obedient to the 
God-given rod of Moses ! We turn trustfully to 
the Leader stronger than the great lawgiver, sure 
that the "Captain of our salvation" will guide 
us safely all the way He has bidden us take to 
the Promised Land. 

When tempted and overcome and smitten with 
the bite of the most venomous of all serpents, the 
poison-fangs of sin, we remember the writhing 
Israelites brought back from the gates of death 
by one look at the symbol raised aloft as 
a perpetual sign of the Great Healer. We 
lift our eyes to the cross of Calvary, we look, 
we repent, we believe, we are forgiven, and are 
at peace. 

We cannot give up those dear old friends of 
our childhood whom we learned to know and 



196 OUR ELDER BROTHER. 

love as we gathered around our mother's knee, — 
Joseph and Daniel and Kuth and Esther and Job; 
and the Bible children too, — Naaman's little 
maid, the lame Mephibosheth, and Samuel nur- 
tured in the temple, and ever faithul to Israel's 
God! We cannot give up the human old patri- 
archs, who are described as they were, with the 
sins of their time upon them, but who, f alteringly 
taking the hand of the great God, were accepted 
and forgiven. We have the promise of meeting 
them in heaven, where all the redeemed shall 
"sit down in the Kingdom." 

We cannot give up those blessed Psalms which 
through centuries on centuries have expressed 
the aspirations, the repentance, the rapturous 
exaltation, of the long line of saints who have 
passed by grace to glory ! 

We cannot lose the Old Testament, with its 
strong corroboration of the New ! It is rooted 
in our hearts; it has supported us in time past. 

We yield to no man this strong staff of our 
pilgrimage journey! 

We will not give up, we must not give up, we 
need not give up, we dare not give up, the pre- 
cious treasure of the inspired Word of the Old 
Testament! 

What is the command of the Lord Jesus? 
" Search the Scriptures ! " Let us indeed search 
them, "as one who seeketh for hid treasure. 7 ' 



RISEN. 197 

May our eyes be more and more opened to their 
holy teaching, to the strengthening of our faith, 
and the enlightening of our minds to the true 
character of the Lord, just and righteous and full 
of compassion, whose day Abraham "saw and 
was glad." 



VI. 

THE SHEER 

Feed my lambs. Feed my sheep. — John xxi. 15, 16. 

MUCH is said and written of the proper quali- 
fications and preparation for the ministry. 
Much, doubtless, needs to be emphatically said 
as to gifts, learning, and inner life. The cham- 
pion for Christ must be armed at all points, for 
warfare offensive and defensive. He must meet 
wickedness in high places and in the dark dens 
of vice, lukewarmness within the Church, and 
unbelief triumphant without. While all this is 
true, we must not forget that most important for 
the consecrated servant of Christ is the answer 
he can honestly give to the simple question, 
thrice urged by our Saviour on Peter before that 
disciple received his parting commission from 
the Great Shepherd of the Sheep. 

How many students of theology, how many 
settled clergymen, how many exhorters and evan- 
gelists, how many mothers and Sunday-school 



KISEN. 199 

teachers, if in their still solitude they should 
hear the voice of the Lord asking them, "Lovest 
thou Me? " would be shamed into an abashed and 
conscience-stricken silence ! How few would 
dare to answer, "Thou, who knowest all things,'' 
Thou, who knowest my sins and my backslidings, 
" Thou knowest that I love Thee. " Yet only they 
who can so answer have the essential element of 
the true call to the cure of souls. 

In this personal love of Christ we have the 
secret of the success of many simple and un- 
learned men in so telling the " old, old story " 
that hearts are stirred and souls renewed. 

Happily the true Christian life is ever devel- 
oping, going on towards perfection. It may be 
quickened into existence where all before has 
been deadness and desolation. There are in- 
stances on record where clergymen who have 
begun their ministry in a cold and formal spirit 
have been awakened, through outer or inner 
experiences, to a sense of their individual needs 
and of the solemn responsibilities of a faithful 
shepherd of the sheep. 

And what is it to feed the sheep? Of the 
domestic animals, the sheep perhaps needs the 
greatest care. Lavish nature spreads for him a 
banquet in the " green pastures and beside the still 
waters." Thither he is to be gently and persis- 
tently led. He must be watched, that he does not 



200 OUR ELDER BROTHER. 

stray into dangerous places. He must be guarded 
from the ravenous beasts that would gladly de- 
vour him. A shelter must be provided for him ; 
for night and cold and storm. 

The sheep has his relish for food as a gift 
from God. That we cannot impart to him. 
We try to lead a friend, an ignorant sinner, an 
unbeliever, a circle of little children, to a true 
knowledge of the Lord Jesus. We find it impos- 
sible to give a single soul a desire, a relish for 
spiritual things. Let that be once sent by 
Heaven, then we feel that we can really feed the 
sheep, now longing for food. Let them who 
would feed the sheep of the Good Shepherd be 
instant and faithful in prayer that God will give 
this appetite for holy things to the souls to whom 
they would minister. 

We may not, however, be satisfied with simply 
praying. We have here our responsibility for 
active exertion. Of the Heavenly Shepherd it is 
said, "He maketh me to lie down in green pas- 
tures, He leadeth me beside the still waters." 
This leading of the sheep to the food convenient 
for him, through the services of the sanctuary, 
the solemn sacraments, and the preached word, 
is the work of all the churches. Form and 
method there must be in this, as in all efforts 
that are lasting and effective; but not a stiff 
form, not an iron method. 



RISEN. 201 

The sheep are not tethered, each by himself, to 
graze upon his allotted bit of ground. The shep- 
herd leads the flock in the open meadow or on the 
wild hillside, glad to see them, perhaps in groups 
here and there, feasting on a rich bit of pasture, 
or tasting the spring at the fountain-head. But 
there must be no wandering for tempting tufts 
on the edge of the hanging precipice, or ventur- 
ing to dark thickets, the hiding-places of devour- 
ing beasts. 

Sorrow and sickness and the bed of death are 
to human beings what night and storm and cold 
are to the humble sheep. For these times of 
peril, special provision must be made. They 
come to each soul separately, and the true pastor 
will care individually at such times for the mem- 
bers of his flock. Then he must gently urge the 
suffering sheep to the protection of the needed 
shelter. He must prayerfully lay the weary 
sheep in the arms of the only One who can bear 
him safely home. The solemn direct personal 
appeals that might have been rejected before, or 
have proved ineffectual, may not only now be 
welcomed, but abundantly blessed. 

And as to the lambs, how are they to be fed? 
God gives the mother food for them to suffice for 
their tender infancy. So is it with the spiritual 
life of the child. Many a babe drawn to its 
mother's breast for its necessary food has at the 



202 OUR ELDER BROTHER. 

same time all unconsciously received a blessing, 
sent from Heaven, through a mother's fond look 
of love and a mother's fervent prayer. She is, 
later, the first to clasp his baby hands, as a silent 
expression of assent to the petitions he cannot 
yet understand. So she leads him, little by 
little, to the "green pastures and the still 
waters." She has no stiff, conventional way with 
him. He follows naturally where she goes, 
happy at her side. He knows the spot where 
she daily bows the knee, and bows himself beside 
her, before he can realize the meaning of the at- 
titude. He has found out the Book that is dearest 
to her, and the songs she best loves to sing. He 
learns to lisp the name that is for her "the name 
above all others." He loves the Lord Jesus first 
because she loves Him, and later he thanks Him 
for such a mother. So by degrees the child learns 
to share the spiritual food that is so welcome and 
strengthening to the mother. 

With wise parents there will be no stuffing 
children with religious nourishment, no expecta- 
tion of a development beyond their years. Yet 
children, too, must be methodically led in the 
spiritual life. Here a short time of family 
worship in the morning is most efficient. For 
their own sake, for the children's sake, parents 
should find time to lead their household in family 
prayer. They may have a fixed allegiance to 



RISEN. 203 

their Heavenly King, but it is not so with the 
children. They have no confirmed, habitual 
longing for holy things. They live in the pres- 
ent. All things are new to them every morning. 
The joys and sorrows and even the teachings 
of yesterday are often with them altogether things 
of the past. They have no abiding sense of duty 
or responsibility. They have no stable affec- 
tion for an ever-remembered Heavenly Father. 
With the new morning comes the fresh, eager 
interest in play and school and simple work and 
childish plans and undertakings. Their thoughts 
do not, like the lark, fly upward with the open- 
ing day. It has on them an immense influence 
to know that the whole household pays its united 
tribute of prayer and praise, gladly, lovingly, 
day by day, to the Great God above, whom the 
little ones, too, must learn to love and serve. A 
few such moments of family prayer, begun with 
a cheerful hymn in which the children soon 
willingly join, sends them on their way, rightly 
started for the coming day. 

Nor must the children's own private prayers, 
morning and evening, be neglected. They must 
as soon as possible cease to be merely repeated 
prayers, but rather a natural expression of thank- 
fulness, with added simple petitions for help 
and protection such as a child can really mean. 
So they must be led on to a true and aifec- 



204 OUR ELDER BROTHER. 

tionate intercourse with the Great and Loving 
Friend. 

And the lambs on Sunday? How are they 
then to be fed? Freely, happily, abundantly. 
The Lord's Day is to be made to them a delight, 
not a bondage. But it is to be the Lord's Day, 
not to be given up, wholly or in part, to week-day 
interests or the pursuit of selfish pleasure. 
There should be a specially joyous, loving spirit 
in the family on Sunday. 

More free time given by the father to the 
children on the First Day of the week, gives it a 
certain glad pre-eminence, and helps them by 
degrees to think of the Heavenly Father as One 
to be loved as well as revered. 

The mother who has a full nursery, naturally 
wishing her servants all possible Sabbath rest 
and Sabbath privileges, has often but little time 
on Sunday to spare for her older children. On 
the father the duty so presses of keeping them 
happy and good ; and it is a blessed duty. In its 
performance, little hands may draw him from the 
path of worldliness, and little lips prompt him 
to the trust and simplicity of which the child is 
the best teacher. The mother may have time for 
a hymn or two, sung with the eager group about 
her, or for a little pleasant, profitable reading 
aloud, but possibly no more. Happy for her if 
she herself can be so refreshed in the midst of 
her Sunday afternoon cares. 



RISEN. 205 

To the house of God the lambs in a truly 
Christian family soon learn to love to go. They 
are to be led thither, not driven. Where the 
parents go with evident joy, the children will 
soon wish to follow. A row of devout little 
children keeping up with the service as they best 
can, and happy to be at church, may perhaps 
unconsciously prove the most profitable sermon 
for some indifferent worshipper who has come to 
up to the courts of the Lord because it is seemly 
to do so. 

The lambs must be guarded from bad compan- 
ions, worse for them than the wild beasts for the 
helpless sheep. The wolf devours the lamb at 
once; but the bad companion poisons the life of 
the child and leaves him to a low existence, to 
his own misery and the contamination of his 
fellows. 

Keep your little one, if you can, from bad 
companions, but he is not safest when most 
strictly penned in. When he does break loose, 
he will probably run as far as possible from 
the place of his confinement. Try to form his 
tastes and his principles, and by all means strive 
to keep his confidence. Let him know the kind 
of company you yourself enjoy, and would like 
to have for him. Have his schoolmates and 
friends about him sometimes under your own 
eye. Watch them and him as a guardian angel, 



206 OUR ELDER BROTHER. 

not as a snappish house-dog, to have subject for 
growling. 

Let love season all you do for your little ones. 
Above all, pray for and with your children. 
Christ loves the lambs. "It is not the will of 
your Heavenly Father that one of these little 
ones should perish." Prayer, purity, and pa- 
tience will in the end have their perfect work. 

Remember that in feeding the lambs you are 
yourself drawing near to the Good Shepherd. 
What you do for them you do for Him. In the 
end, when our Elder Brother gathers His own, 
may you be able to say joyfully, not one lacking, 
"Here am I, with the children God has given 
me! " 



VII. 
DAILY BREAD. 

Children, have ye any meat? — John xxi. 5. 

HUMAN nature runs to extremes. Once 
heartily determined to cast off the bonds 
of the world, the flesh, and the devil, it imagines 
for itself a purely spiritual religion, above and 
beyond all earthly cares and interests, rather than 
a new life thrown into all old activities and rela- 
tions and affections. The Christian man longs 
to be a pure spirit. God has linked him with a 
body and set him among his fellows to be loving 
and honest and pure and true. 

The whole tenor of the Saviour's example and 
teaching is calculated to counteract all tendency 
to the overstrained and unnatural. Let once 
the divine life have been implanted in the soul, 
our Lord will have it developed like the quick- 
ening seed, to adorn and bless the place where it 
is appointed to grow. He was not pitched too 
high for human sympathies. Preaching and heal- 



208 OUR ELDER BROTHER. 

ing, supplying physical needs and soothing and 
uplifting sorrowing hearts, went hand in hand 
with Him. He whose mandate could call back 
the ruler's little daughter from beyond the gates 
of death could yet, in homely phrase, remind the 
rejoicing parents to give the rescued child " some- 
thing to eat." 

After our Lord's resurrection He appeared 
miraculously among His disciples and discoursed 
to them of the sublime mysteries of the King- 
dom; yet He could sit down simply with the two 
friends at Emmaus, or tenderly ask the weary, 
disappointed fishermen by Tiberias, "Children, 
have ye any meat?" and satisfy, too, their press- 
ing needs. 

Let us treasure up this question of our Lord's 
for our comfort in this work-a-day world. It 
encourages us to dare to go to Him for help in 
all the affairs and interests that encompass us 
in our outward life. He will give us our daily 
bread as well as forgive us our trespasses, and 
keep us from temptation and lead us into the 
Heavenly Kingdom. 

With regard to our spiritual life, too, our Lord 
comes to us with the striking words, " Children, 
have ye any meat?" Sometimes, in answer to 
His tender questioning, the Christian soul would 
tell its Lord of its unsatisfied wants. It would 
say, " I have no pastor, no devout friend to whom 



RISEN. 209 

I can open my doubts and struggles and perplex- 
ities. He who should teach me in the house of 
God is too dull in his own spiritual life, or too 
little gifted, to give me, Sunday after Sunday, 
the help I so bitterly need. I go to the sanc- 
tuary hungering and thirsting, and come empty 
away." This would be the statement of many 
an inexperienced Christian longing to be coun- 
selled and led in the way of life. 

There are times with almost every true fol- 
lower of our Lord when the depths of sorrow or 
anxiety or spiritual distress are to be passed 
through alone, as far as human comforters are 
concerned. May not this be the discipline sent 
of God to lead the harassed and afflicted one to 
close and trustful communion with the Heavenly 
Friend? 

When we think the appointed messenger gives 
us no satisfactory food in the sanctuary, the 
Lord is still there, "where two or three are gath- 
ered together in His name." He has ever a sure 
blessing for all who are " truly seeking His face." 
Let the souls that are "hungering and thirsting 
in a dry and parched land" make at least for 
themselves the house of God a house of prayer, 
and their souls will be fed abundantly, and satis- 
fied with water from the living spring. 

The practical question, " Children, have ye any 
meat? " should be on the lips and in the hearts of 

14 



210 OUR ELDER BROTHER. 

the followers of the merciful Lord, as addressed 
to the suffering poor. In our homes of comfort 
we too often forget the very existence of the 
hungry and the houseless. When we do not see 
the poor, it may be for us as if they did not exist. 
If once, while we sat at our abundant meal, we 
could suddenly see, in a vision, our glad family 
table circled about by starving children, whose 
faces, haggard with want, and old before their 
time, looked with ravenous eagerness at our in- 
viting fare, how the heart would be moved! We 
could not touch a morsel before we had fed the 
hungry we had too long forgotten in our land of 
plenty. 

Think of these little ones, if you will, some- 
times when you take your daily food, or sit 
down at your feasts, and you must for them 
freely open heart and purse. At that moment of 
real feeling, let wisdom come to your aid to 
show how and where and when such children 
should not only be temporarily fed, but be taught 
by honest labor to earn their daily bread. 

And those boys and girls who lack "the meat 
that perisheth," have they sustaining nourish- 
ment for their tempted souls? Look at the little 
ones near to you by the ties of blood. How you 
shrink from the thought of their being even 
contaminated by the knowledge of the sin in the 
midst of which these outcast children must live. 



RISEN. 211 

How anxious you are to have your dear children 
take early the Saviour's offered hand, and be led 
in the ways of purity and joy. Have you no 
love to spare for the children who in the homes 
of want are breathing the very atmosphere of 
vice? They, too, have souls to be washed and 
made white in the blood of the Lamb. The 
Good Shepherd is their Shepherd too. He hears 
their far-away bleating in the wilderness of sin. 
He bids you see to it that they are brought home 
to the fold, to rejoice with your own little ones 
one day in heaven. 



3tgcentie&, 



I. 


Lost and Found. 


II. 


A MlKACLE. 


III. 


Union. 


IV. 


Dying Eyes. 


V. 


A Voice eeom Heaven. 


VI. 


Persecution. 


VII. 


Penitents. 


VIII. 


Gentiles. 


IX. 


Cheer. 


X. 


Weakness. 


XI. 


Priests. 


XII. 


Churches. 



i. 

LOST AND FOUND. 

He lifted up His hands, and blessed them. . . . While 
He blessed them, He was parted from them, and carried up 
into heaven. — Luke xxiv. 50, 51. 

POETS and painters, and even preachers, im- 
pressed with the beauty and glory of the 
ascension of our Lord, seem to have striven to 
keep in our minds the idea of our Master gono 
from us, lost in a cloud, shut out from us, until 
He shall appear again in majesty to judge both 
the quick and the dead. 

The human life of our Saviour finished, indeed, 
when He was received up again to the bosom of 
His Father. Yet why should we, like the awed 
disciples, still stand gazing up into heaven? Our 
Lord was from the time of His ascension to be 
no longer approached only in the one place where 
He could appear in His mortal form. He was 
to be henceforward present in all homes, and 



216 OUR ELDER BROTHER. 

indwelling in all hearts that would receive Him. 
He was not to be the companion and friend alone 
of the little company of faithful ones whom He 
had gathered around Him during His short min- 
istry, but of all those who through them should 
believe in His name. The King, the Messiah of 
the Jews, had become the Eedeemer of all the 
nations of the earth. 

This is our inheritance. Let us not stand 
gazing up into the impenetrable heavens, lost in 
trying to imagine the glories not yet revealed to 
us. Let us rather fold our hands in humility, 
and pray, with the blind man, to see Jesus walk- 
ing at our side. We need to feel the presence of 
our Lord, drawing near to us with human sym- 
pathies, but with the divine riches of inexhaus- 
tible love, infinite patience, illimitable willing- 
ness to help, and almighty power to fashion our 
souls, comfort us in our sorrows, and deliver us 
in our dangers. 

This is the Saviour we need. This is the 
Saviour who is given to us, through His finished 
work. We are no longer strangers and outcasts, 
we are no longer aliens and slaves. We may, 
through the Great Substitute, our Elder Brother, 
be forgiven children of the Heavenly Father and 
u fellow-citizens of the house of God." Born into 
the kingdom, bought with the blood of the Lamb, 
we may journey joyfully to the Heavenly Home. 



ASCENDED. 217 

Holding his nail-pierced hands out to bless, 
our Lord passed at His ascension from human 
eyes. It was His last expression of full forgive- 
ness of His enemies, and His love for the world 
He had redeemed. 

Do we so deal with those who have wounded 
and despised us? Have we "the mind of 
Christ " ? Come we with blessings to those who 
have wronged us? Can we further their happi- 
ness, and delight to minister bo their needs? 
This is the spirit of those who would " ascend up 
where Christ has gone before. " There have been 
Christians who, in a wild transport of expecta- 
tion of the near coming of Christ in glory, have 
left their ordinary occupations, in the hopes of 
so fixing their eyes on heaven as to be doubly 
ready to greet the Lord at His great Second Ad- 
vent. Such enthusiasts have even prepared for 
themselves special white robes, in which, free 
from all stains of earth, they hoped to mount in 
the air and join the Lord with His glorious train 
of saints and angels. 

Alas for poor mortality ! We cannot form for 
ourselves a purity that shall make us fit for the 
Kingdom of Heaven. It is only the Master of 
the marriage feast who can give us the wedding 
garment. We must wait to be "clothed upon," 
when "mortality shall be swallowed up in 
life." We do not wing our way to the skies. In 



218 OUR ELDER BROTHER. 

the midst of ordinary, every-day occupations we 
must mount upward, step by step, through faith- 
fulness, humility, and self-sacrifice. We climb 
the " Hill Difficulty " leaning on our Lord, but 
while in the body we walk an earthly road. Here 
we are to serve, not reign. Here we are to pray, 
not prophesy. Here we are to follow, not lead. 
Here we are to live in meekness, not majesty. 
Here we are to strive to be like our Elder Brother, 
when " found in fashion as a man." There we 
shall be with Him and see Him as He is. There, 
in the kingdom of the Father, He will not be 
ashamed to call us brethren. 

Faithfully walking our humble path here below, 
we shall welcome the summons of our Heavenly 
Master, whether it be "to meet the Lord in the 
air," or to sleep in Jesus, to wake in glory. 



II. 

A MIEACLE. 

When the Comforter is come, whom I will send unto 
you from the Father, even the Spirit of Truth, which pro- 
ceedeth from the Father, He shall testify of Me. — 
John xv. 26. 

IT is a common saying that the days of miracles 
are over. Yet there is a supernatural won- 
der in our days, which gives perpetual witness to 
the mighty power of God. When a man is sud- 
denly changed in his aims, his hopes, his tastes, 
and his affections, a great wonder has been 
wrought. When the openly vicious begin to 
strive for the sake of Jesus, and, relying on His 
help, to lead a sober, pure, and useful life, and 
even succeed in the undertaking, they give strong 
testimony to the power of the Spirit of God. The 
opening of the eyes of the man born blind seems 
hardly more the result of a superhuman power 
than the change that makes the late worldling, 
or profligate, or criminal, a man walking in the 
ways of simplicity, virtue, and holiness. 



220 OUR ELDER BROTHER. 

These great changes are all marked by one 
distinguishing trait. The power of the Holy 
Ghost in the heart of man shows itself by open- 
ing the spiritual eyes to the character, work, 
commands, and promises of Jesus of Nazareth. 
Sometimes the converted soul, but late sunk in 
sin, seems almost transported by a view of the 
purity, the holiness, the indescribable love of 
Christ, and His amazing sacrifice for sin. 

Who has not seen instances where from this ec- 
stastic beginning had been developed the rounded, 
beautiful life of the mature Christian? 

But to begin well is not always to end well. 
This period of rapturous acceptance of the great 
truths of religion has been known to pass away 
without producing the corresponding change in 
the outer and inner life. This joyous clearness 
in seeing for a time the beauty and preciousness 
of the Eedeemer's life and teaching, remarkable 
as it is, is not enough to produce the great miracle 
of which we are speaking. It is, when it stops 
here, a half work, an uncompleted thing. 

The commands of our Lord Jesus should be 
as dear to the Christian as His promises, and as 
affectionately responded to for His sake. That 
is a safe form of rapturous devotion to the great 
Elder Brother which gratefully welcomes every 
opportunity to do in His name the unwelcome 
duty, or forego the favorite sin. That is a sure 



ASCENDED. 221 

work of the Holy Ghost which opens the eyes to 
the deceitfulness of the human heart, as well as 
to the "glory of the King in His beauty." That 
is a true conversion which prompts to penitence 
and purity as well as to psalms of praise. 

For the golden fields of the harvest we must 
have the God-given seed, the heaven-sent rain 
and sud shine; but we must have also the timely 
work of the sower, the patient toil of the husband- 
man, and the glad garnering of the faithful 
reaper. So is it in the kingdom of grace. God 
gives freely and abundantly, but on His own 
conditions. 

There are persons who perhaps honestly pray 
for the work of the Holy Spirit in their hearts, 
and then go their way to their pleasures and 
their cares, their absorbing pursuits or their 
morbidly nurtured sorrows, as if they themselves 
had nothing further to do with the matter. 

The Spirit will take of the things of Christ 
and show them to us, but we must look to be 
healed. We must day by day take time to dwell 
on the life and character, the words and the 
works, of our Lord, and try to become so impressed 
by their preciousness and importance to us that 
in our leisure moments our thoughts turn as 
naturally to such meditations as do the child's 
to his play, or the mother's to her little ones. 

The closet and the sanctuary, the Word and 



222 OUR ELDER BROTHER. 

the sacraments, the book of nature and the voice 
of friendly counsel, honest labor and well-earned 
rest, prosperity and adversity, joy and sorrow, 
family affection and social intercourse, the wise 
book or the lone meditation, the poor and the 
penitent, the sunshine and the shadows of life, 
may be so blessed to the seeker of sanctiflcation 
as to become to him channels of divine grace. 

He who folds his hands and sits statue-like to 
be made a saint, may be a cold image of a Chris- 
tian, but never a living likeness of the living 
Lord. We must seek God if we would find Him; 
and He is ever found of them who truly seek 
Him. 

The disciples waited at Jerusalem in prayer 
and supplication after the glorious parting at 
Olivet. When, on the day of Pentecost, they 
were filled with a strange power, above and be- 
yond their own personality, how joyous must have 
been their conviction that the Lord, who is the 
Truth as well as the Life, had remembered His 
promise, and sent to them the Comforter to bide 
with them always ! What an encouragement 
they now had to ask all things in His name, who 
could so redeem His pledge ! Now they were 
freshly linked to the Friend who seemed to have 
passed from them to a far, foreign land. He had 
sent them a token of His continual remembrance 
of their needs. They were in touch with Him 



ASCENDED. 223 

once more. Not once alone was this blessing 
given. It was henceforward to be a means of 
perpetual intercourse with the Lord of their 
future home, and a wonderful power to prepare 
them for its endless joys. 

What that glorious gift was to the first disci- 
ples it may be to us. It is for us the same en- 
couragement to prayer that it was to them, — 
even that the faithful Lord is ever true to His 
word. We may not expect to work their miracles, 
or to speak with tongues as they did, but there 
are wonders to be worked in us in the sanctifi- 
cation of heart and life. Who is it among us 
who is really trying to order thought, word, and 
deed after the perfect law, who does not find 
here a work too great for human power? Here 
the divine aid must be granted, or we cannot come 
off conquerors. The "unruly member" must be 
robbed of its deadly poison, and taught to speak 
the loving language of "the kingdom." The 
heart-springs must be cleansed by the living 
water. These great miracles are the work of 
the Holy Spirit, for which we must persistently 
pray. We must pray for the spirit of sanctifica- 
tion; but while we pray we must watch and 
work. Living the life of love, prayer, and 
watchfulness, we shall persevere unto the end. 



III. 

UNION. 

That they may he one ; as Thou, Father, art in Me, and I 
in Thee, that they may he one in us. — John xvii. 21. 

OUE, Elder Brother, in His teaching, now 
lifted up the poor things of earth to be the 
symbols of things heavenly, and now solemn 
mysteries from above were allowed to be examples 
for our humble imitation in our simple, every- 
day life. The household objects about us in our 
homes were thus taught a speech by which to re- 
mind us of holy counsel and a heavenly dwelling- 
place. Great truths, too deep for our full com- 
prehension, were made to be to us in our earthly 
walk a source of guidance and consolation. 

There is, there must be, much in the Bible 
that exceeds our poor comprehension; but our 
Saviour has illustrated and simplified much that 
it is difficult for us to grasp. We might not 
have dared to compare the divine unity with our 
poor fellowships here below. Our Lord, who 
so well knew the oneness of the God of Love, 



ASCENDED. 225 

has set it before us as an example. He prayed 
for all who should believe in His name "that 
they may be one as we are one." 

God has given us the family as a perpetual 
embodiment of the truth that love is the one 
principle of real unity in the midst of diversity. 
It has been said that for the exercise of the 
highest affection there should be love between 
two, and a mutually shared affection for a third 
object or some great outside interest. This is 
specially exemplified by the structure of the 
family. The husband and wife, dear to each 
other, have a common devotion to their little 
ones. Brothers and sisters have their reciprocal 
affection and their filial love. Yet how often 
the seeds of discord spring into rank, unwhole- 
some growth in the very bosom of the family. 
Where there should be oneness there may be 
envy and jealousy, contention and alienation. 

Selfishness may prompt husband or wife to be 
dissatisfied with the way influence or rule is 
shared between the heads of the family. The 
shy husband ma} r even feel himself cast into the 
shadow by the brilliant conversational powers of 
the wife. Even a loving wife may sometimes 
find herself almost crushed by the force and wis- 
dom and attainments of the husband. She may 
be depressed and extinguished in the presence 
of him whom she so cordially admires. 

15 



226 OUR ELDER BROTHER. 

Self dies hard in human nature. The once 
strong-minded father may think it trying to see 
in his declining years that it is his brilliant son 
who now draws around him the eager, listening 
circle, while the remarks of the old man are 
hardly heard at all, or little regarded. The 
mother may be wounded as she sees time after 
time the love of her early friends grow cold 
towards her, while it has taken new life towards 
her winning daughter. 

Envy, jealousy, and selfishness cause these 
painful feelings, which are not the less sinful 
and destructive of inner peace because they are 
hidden from human eyes, in the depths of the 
turbulent heart. 

Among brothers and sisters the struggle for 
pre-eminence, or the contests about mine and 
thine, may creep in, even to make the nursery a 
scene of quarrels, — the promise of the lifelong 
bickerings and small rivalries that take the 
place of true brotherly affection. 

Mutual love makes a family a blessed unity. 
Without love a family is only an aggregate of 
uncongenial items. 

Our Lord prays for His followers, "That they 
may be one, as Thou, Father, art in Me, and I in 
Thee, that they also may be one in us, that the 
world may know that Thou hast sent Me." To 
reach this loving unity must be the aim of the 
Church Catholic ! 



ASCENDED, 227 

When one throb of love for our Elder Brother 
and for all His true followers passes round the 
world as the electric current speeds from land 
to land, then will all the nations begin to 
be indeed of the kindgom of our Lord and His 
Christ. 

We can each do something to bring about that 
happy day, by suppressing in ourselves party 
prejudice, and using our influence against the 
animosity of a contentious spirit of division. 
We can join hand in hand with all them who 
love the Lord Jesus in sincerity and truth, and 
give them a brotherly greeting. We can own the 
likeness of the Master wherever we see it. We 
can acknowledge a fellow-disciple who does not 
use the same attitude in prayer that we do, or 
sing the same sacred songs, or have the name of 
the same country or the same man as the label of 
the Church to which he belongs. 

Let us "love as brethren, be pitiful, be cour- 
teous;" and true Christian sympathy will in- 
crease by exercise, and win responsive warmth. 
So shall we grow in likeness to the God of Love, 
Father, Son, and Holy Ghost. 



IV. 



DYING EYES. 



n 



Behold, I see the heavens opened, and the Son of Ma 
standing at the right hand of God. — Acts vii. 56. 



WHEN our friends pass away to the Better 
Country, we have heard their last words, 
we have seen their dear faces for the last time 
on earth. Not so was it with the departure of 
our Elder Brother from the scene of His great 
work here below. 

As we know something of our Lord's life and 
His high and solemn purpose before He was 
the Babe of Bethlehem, so we are also permitted 
to have tidings from Him after He was received 
up into heaven. We have the evidence as well 
as the assurance that He is " the same yesterday, 
to-day, and forever." 

To see Jesus in His glory was, as far as we 
know, first granted to faithful Stephen, in the 
midst of his martyrdom. " He, being full of the 
Holy Ghost, looked up into heaven and saw the 
glory of God, and Jesus standing at the right hand 



ASCENDED. 229 

of God." What wonder that after such a revela- 
tion he was so lifted above mortal pain and fear 
that in the midst of the fast-falling stones he 
"fell asleep" ! 

Stephen really saw his Master and spoke to 
Him when he said, "Lord Jesus, receive my 
spirit. . . . Lord, lay not this sin to their charge I" 
Faith had been changed to sight while he was 
yet in the body. Who can tell how many of the 
persecutors of Stephen went home believers in 
the Jesus to whom the martyr had so evidently 
spoken, and who had given him power to pass 
peacefully through a cruel death ! 

Since the time of Stephen, many true Chris- 
tians seem to have had their eyes opened to see 
in the dying hour something of the glory await- 
ing them beyond the dark river. Who has not 
had, among his circle of friends, devout believers 
who have been permitted to see in their last 
moments Him who had long been their dearest 
companion? Others have murmured of visions 
of angels, others of the well-beloved face of a 
sainted mother or a departed friend, welcoming 
them to the Heavenly Home. Dying eyes have 
been filled with rapture, the lips could not speak, 
and the still, cold face was stamped with the im- 
press left by the joy and peace of a glad foretaste 
of heaven in the moment of departure. This is 
sight, not merely faith. 



230 OUR ELDER BROTHER. 

That no such revelation lias been granted to 
this or that dying Christian must not be taken 
as an evidence against the reality of his spirit- 
ual life. God deals out His special blessings in 
the kingdom of grace, as in the providential 
world, as seemeth to Him best. He has His 
great purposes for us and the souls about us, in 
the way in which He leads us even to the gates 
of heaven. 

To one He gives the angels' sight in the 
dying hour. Another, beyond the dark tomb, 
may have the tender welcome, "Blessed are they 
who have not seen, and yet have believed ! " 
How many faint-hearted Christians, discouraged 
and despairing under mere ordinary worries and 
disappointments, pant for the martyr's sight, 
while all unprepared to show the martyr's cou- 
rage in the time of trial. They want to grasp 
the crown, but will not bear the cross! 

Work, not rapture, is the usual portion of the 
believer's commonplace path. Patient continu- 
ance in well-doing, with persistent penitence and 
prayer, bring quiet joy and peace. Love to our 
fellow-men lifts us slowly up to God. They 
who have humbly looked down to find some 
lowly work for Christ will surely one day look 
up to heaven to see Him, "not through a glass, 
darkly, but face to face." 



A VOICE FBOM HEAVEN". 

Much more shall not we escape, if we turn away from 
Him that speaketh from heaven. — Heb. xii. 25. 

\ POSTLES in the midst of the trials of their 
XjL ministry were privileged to hear again and 
again the voice they best loved, and to have 
words of cheer from the ascended Lord. He 
spoke not only for them, but for us also. The 
express command concerning the revelation made 
to the honored John at Patmos was, " What thou 
seest, write in a book." Of those who should 
receive this precious testimony it is plainly said, 
"Blessed is he that readeth ! " It is even 
written, " It is I, Jesus, who have sent mine angel 
to testify these things to you in the churches." 

How worthy of our affectionate, careful study 
are all the known words spoken from heaven 
by our ascended, glorified Elder Brother ! How 
solemn for us is the warning, "Much more shall 
not we escape, if we turn away from Him that 
speaketh from heaven i " 



232 OUR ELDER BROTHER. 

And how tender and loving are many of these 
our Lord's utterances from the throne to His 
struggling foster-brethren below! 

"Behold, I stand at the door and knock." Our 
Eoyal Brother is with us in heart, yet "without," 
beyond the sorrows and sufferings of this lower 
world, outside of our sphere of vision, too often 
far from our thoughts, hidden from our souls in 
our utter absorption in the cares and follies of 
this visible world. Our Lord, our Master, is 
knocking at our lowly door. He comes from His 
throne of glory to our poor hearts, and bids us let 
Him in. He comes out as our Judge and King. 
In the simple, familiar words of earthly friend- 
ship, He pleads to come in and sup with us. He 
will lay aside His royal dignity, and be to us as 
our nearest and dearest on earth, with whom we 
share our daily food, and the sweet intercourse 
of family life. So our Lord speaks to us, His 
poor unworthy brethren. 

And how is it with us? We would have Him 
far away in His glory, to be prayed to at stated 
times, to be worshipped in the hallowed sanctu- 
ary, to be met occasionally at His Holy Table, 
after a solemn time of repentance and sacred 
preparation. 

Not so alone our Master would meet with us. 
He would come to us in our ordinary daily life, 
to sanctify all we do or think or say, — to make 



ASCENDED. 233 

holy our simplest joys and interests. He would 
be with us at table, " about our bed," walk with 
us by the way, join us with our guests, take us 
by the hand on the couch of sickness and in the 
dying hour. 

Shall we let Him knock in vain? Shall we 
close to His tender appeal the hearts we have 
given to Him? Shall we answer to His friendly 
knock, " Not now, Lord ! In heaven we shall be 
ever with Thee. Here we must lead our work- 
a-day life, apart from Thy holy presence"? 

Nay! Let the Lord purify our walk and con- 
versation. Let them be what He hath cleansed, 
and so " not common or unclean." 

Let us open our hearts and our homes, that 
our Lord may be always with us, that He may 
dwell with us, going no more out, and consecrat- 
ing all we do and are, until we go in with Him 
to His Upper Kingdom! 

For our guidance on the way let us cherish 
every word of our Saviour, whether spoken in 
His mysterious union with the Father, before 
He was the Son of Mary, or during His earthly 
ministry, or when in the "voice like many 
waters," from His abundant glory, He warned 
and counselled and comforted with unfailing 
tenderness the faltering, wandering children of 
men! 



VI. 
PERSECUTION. 

/ am Jesus, whom thou persecutest. — Acts ix. 5. 

TT strikes us with wonder that our Lord could 
■*■ say, even when He was in human form, of 
all ministry to suffering man, " Inasmuch as ye 
have done it unto one of the least of these My 
brethren, ye have done it unto Me." It is even 
more difficult to grasp the great fact that in the 
midst of the joys at the right hand of God the 
ascended Lord could so feel Himself one with 
His humble followers that He could make to the 
affrighted Paul the declaration, "I am Jesus, 
whom thou persecutest." 

What had the wrongs of those lowly men and 
women in that little spot of earth to do with the 
"Only Begotten Son, full of grace and truth,'' in 
the glory of His Father's presence? 

Our Lord in His great compassion has chosen 
to link Himself, the Head with the body, even 
the Church of faithful believers. Ascended into 



ASCENDED. 235 

heaven, it had not pleased Him to sever that 
connection. He could feel the sufferings of His 
humblest members, and count their persecution 
as directed against Himself. Our sense of our 
unworthiness to be brought into this sacred rela- 
tion with our Great Redeemer fosters a kind of 
unbelief in this most consoling of realities. As 
the soul resides in the body and permeates and 
influences its every part, so, it is revealed to us, 
our Master dwells, after His wonderful fashion, 
in the hearts of His true servants one and all. 
"Know ye not that Christ dwelleth in you, ex- 
cept ye be reprobates?" — "I in them, and they 
in Me." 

Let us welcome with deep adoration this great 
mystery, in which the Lord makes us, His poor 
human children, His temple, consecrated to His 
use. And let us not stupidly and self -righteously 
assume that we individually alone are to have 
this privilege, or that it is limited to the small 
body of Christians to which we ourselves belong. 
Let us respect the humblest and most faltering 
of the servants of Christ as a part of His body, 
— a trifling part, a diseased part possibly; yet a 
part to be healed and exalted and made useful 
through the indwelling power of God. 

Let us not set ourselves on a pinnacle, as so 
perfect in the interpretation of the Word that 
we may cast out in scorn the self-denying fol- 



236 OUR ELDER BROTHER. 

lowers of Christ who may differ from us in 
some minor point of doctrine, at best but dimly 
revealed, lest we hear the voice of the Master 
saying, "I am Jesus, whom thou persecutest 
in the form of My blinded and devoted disciple." 

We are not to suppose that in the early days 
of the Church, when converts were suddenly 
made by thousands, they were all deeply versed 
in the subtle truths of the new religion. In- 
deed, we know through the inspired Epistles 
that many of those first Christians were in dark- 
ness as to what we might now consider cardinal 
points of belief and practice. Yet they had a 
devotedness that risked all for the cause of 
Christ. They would rather die than deny their 
Master, and He was so one with them that He 
reckoned their persecution as persecution of 
Himself. 

If our Lord so unites Himself with the whole 
Church, how specially He must consider Him- 
self represented by the appointed ambassadors 
who preach and minister in His name. An am- 
bassador at an earthly court must be honored, 
because he represents his ^ sovereign and his 
people. He may be awkward and uncouth, and 
personally unworthy, but he must receive a 
certain amount of outward respect, as he stands, 
not for himself, but for the power from which he 
is accredited. To his own master he is respon- 



ASCENDED. 237 

sible for what lie is, and for his fitness for the 
office he holds. 

An indulged, unfounded dislike for this or 
that clergyman, for what he is privately and 
personally, a light criticism of his manners and 
peculiarities, an assumption of superiority in 
speaking of him, as if he were responsible to 
the critic for his amount of gifts and graces, 
may seem trifling offences; yet by disrespect to 
a clergyman, an undeserved reproach cast on his 
person and name, his influence may be slowly 
undermined, and his office brought into con- 
tempt. The Lord, identifying Himself with 
His servant and ambassador, may whisper 
reproachfully to the self-satisfied fault-finder 
and scandal-monger, "I am Jesus, whom thou 
persecutest." 

It is a serious matter, that touches the honor 
of the King of kings. Let those who know 
certainly of real wrong-doings by such authorized 
messengers of the Gospel be ready to suffer 
themselves for the purifying of the Church. Let 
them be willing to testify openly against such 
offenders before the proper authorities, and so 
have them lawfully deposed. This is a far 
better way to show zeal for truth and right- 
eousness than by casting slurs upon the whole 
clerical body, or privately denouncing this or 
that clergyman as unfit to minister at the altar. 



238 OUR ELDER BROTHER. 

What a solemn responsibility rests on the 
clergy, who so particularly and officially repre- 
sent the Heavenly King ! How pure they should 
be in life and conversation, how above all re- 
proach ! How sound they should be in doctrine ! 
How diligent they should be in their high call- 
ing! How they should shine with the bright- 
ness of them who are much " on the Mount " in 
sweet, loving communion with the Great Head 
of the Church ! 

It is not alone private Christians and cler- 
gymen who are honored images and substitutes 
of the King of kings. We have His messengers 
in the nursery and the hovel, in the hospital, and 
even sometimes in the prison. If we withhold 
rights from the lowly, freedom to worship from 
the devout, and help from the needy, to us comes. 
the voice of reproof, "I am Jesus, whom thou 
persecutest." 

David could cherish the lame Mephibosheth, 
and welcome the unfortunate cripple to the royal 
table, for the sake of the princely friend of his 
humble youth. Is there no sufferer you can 
succor for the sake of a higher Prince, who has 
given you a share in His birthright, and an 
inheritance with Him in His kingdom? 

Observing children might tell of flattering 
guests who have praised and caressed them in 
the presence of their parents, but, meeting them 



ASCENDED. 239 

in other society, have shown a profound indiffer- 
ence to their merits and attractions. How do 
we meet the despised, the distressed of this 
world, when forgetful that the eye of the Great 
Friend of all is upon us? 

Let us beware lest we, now heartlessly in- 
different to the sufferings of our brethren, should 
hear, at the last solemn Day of Retribution, the 
voice of the Judge Himself pronouncing our 
doom in the words, "I am Jesus, whom thou 
hast persecuted! " 



VII. 
PENITENTS. 

/ am with thee, and no man shall set on thee to hurt thee : 
for I have much people in this city, — Acts xviii. 10. 

THE gold ring and the goodly apparel are 
always in the Father's house for the re- 
turning penitent. The Lord Jesus has His own 
special mercies for those who have wandered 
into a far country. In their deep sense of their 
own sinfulness they need an unusual assurance 
that their souls, too, can be "washed and made 
white in the blood of the Lamb." 

To see the ascended Lord, to be spoken to by 
Him again and again, were Paul's seal, not only 
of the authority of his apostleship, but of his 
own free and full forgiveness. As such, he ac- 
cepts them humbly and gratefully, never forget- 
ting to think of himself as the "chief of sinners." 

Paul, who knew the converting power of God 
in the experience of his own strong manhood, 



ASCENDED. 241 

had hope for all to whom he could preach the 
Gospel. To Festus and Agrippa, to jailers and 
prisoners, to idolaters and pharisees, he could 
tell the story of the cross, believing it possible 
that the miracle that had been wrought in him 
could be repeated in the souls of his hearers. 
He was a living witness of the truth and power 
of the Gospel which he preached. 

To speak fearlessly to the Jews and Gentiles 
in idolatrous Corinth he had a double encourage- 
ment. In a vision of the night, the voice of the 
Lord had said to him, "Be not afraid, but speak 
and hold not thy peace ; for I am with thee, and 
no man shall set on thee to hurt thee, for I have 
much people in this city." 

In the wonderful list which Paul has given of 
the afflictions and dangers and sufferings through 
which he had passed, we have a clear evidence 
that his Master did not mean that he should 
be spared pain or peril or difficulty in his work 
as an apostle. He was but to be strengthened 
by the thought that it was not in the power of 
infuriated man to injure one to whom the Lord 
had said, "I have chosen thee," "I am with 
thee." 

Evil men may assail the Christian. They may 
defame or belie him, degrade him in the eyes 
of whole communities, but they cannot hurt him 
if his name is written in heaven. He is safe in 

16 



242 OUR ELDER BROTHER. 

the midst of the wildest storms, for Jesus is 
with him in the ship. 

How little could Paul imagine that the Lord 
had much people in corrupt and heathen Cor- 
inth, — that the Good Shepherd was seeking 
those wandering sheep in that worse than 
wilderness. 

Discouragements await the active Christian, 
wherever he may have his field of labor. He 
must be often tempted to withdraw his hand 
from his work, in helpless despair. Let such 
workers ever remember our Lord's loving ex- 
pression of ownership in the future Christians 
of Corinth. 

Perhaps we see only dead souls and obstinate 
offenders where the Lord sees His own people 
who are to come out from their sins and be 
"sons and daughters to the Lord Almighty." 

There will be joy in heaven if you can win 
one wanderer from the error of his ways, or help 
one puzzled, stumbling pilgrim on the narrow 
upward path. You may work and pray, and 
believe that the Lord will bless all that you 
undertake in His cause. You may have an abun- 
dant harvest where all has seemed barrenness 
and blight. 

Labor in the loving spirit of your Master, not 
as if you were on one side and the wrong-doers 
on the other, opposed and inimical. You are 



ASCENDED. 243 

working for your brethren, — love and seek them 
as brethren. Look for the lost sheep with the 
mind of the Good Shepherd. Remember that it 
is only through the abounding grace from on 
high that you yourself have been brought home 
to "the Shepherd and Bishop of your soul." 



VIII. 

GENTILES. 

Depart, for I will send thee far hence unto the Gentiles. 
Acts xxii. 21. 

THE Jews are not the only nation who have 
looked upon all of a different race as fit 
for scoffing and reproach. It is not alone the 
Chinese who regard all other peoples as mere 
outside barbarians. We are all tainted with the 
same exclusiveness. 

I Extravagant claims to superiority, which a man 
would shrink from putting forward for himself 
individually, he does not hesitate loudly to vin- 
dicate for the nation of which he is a citizen. 

In some quarters the unchristianized world is 
so thoroughly despised that the missionary to 
distant idolaters is looked upon as a mistaken 
fanatic or a drivelling weakling. 

"Why not look after the heathen in our 
midst?" say these objectors, with no little show 
of truth. Yes ! Why not look after the heathen 



ASCENDED. 245 

in our midst? Let that be done thoroughly and 
faithfully. At the same time let not the com- 
mand be neglected which bids us " teach all 
nations " the way of life. 

It is a singular fact that the objectors to 
foreign missions are rarely themselves active in 
bearing the Gospel to the heathen at their doors. 
Most commonly they comfortably sit inactive in 
their own pleasant homes, perhaps within gun- 
shot of the homes of poverty and sin. Some of 
the most devoted foreign missionaries have been 
first zealous workers among the poor and wicked 
at home. These devout men and women, moved 
with pity for "the nations that know not God," 
have left all to enlighten the dark places of 
the earth. May God bless these noble pioneers, 
and wake up the dwellers at ease to something 
of their zeal in the good cause at home or 
abroad ! 

For special work among the Gentiles our Lord 
was pleased to choose one of the most gifted, 
instructed, and devoted of His followers, and 
even to single him out for peculiar honor. Again 
and again the ascended Lord Himself spoke 
words of encouragement to Paul, and indicated 
and located his work. The persecuting Saul 
was to become the persecuted Paul, the great 
Apostle to the Gentiles. Let the Christian 
mother never despair of seeing her wayward 



246 OUR ELDER BROTHER. 

sons the children of God. The might of divine 
grace is boundless. The power of prayer is 
immeasurable. Hedley Vicars, recklessly plung- 
ing into the wild career of a young soldier at a 
foreign station, was to have in the future the 
blessed work of leading as a Christian officer 
his fellows and his subordinates, not only in the 
front of battle, but to the better victory over the 
world, the flesh, and the devil. 

A long line of mothers, before and after the 
untiring Monica, could point to their noble sons 
and say, " Behold the results of earnest, faith- 
ful prayer ! " Such wandering sons, once turned 
towards the upward path, are sure to be eager 
workers for the good of their fellow-men. They 
may have neither the power of Paul nor of 
Apollos, but God will appoint them a field of 
labor, and bless their every honest effort to win 
others from what they know to be the way of 
danger and death. 

There is one whole class of men who have a 
world-wide mission. They are at one time in 
so-called Christian ports ; at another in the lone 
islands of the ocean; at another in the crowded 
cities of the East. The seamen on merchant 
vessels, in the whalers of the North, and in the 
ships of proud navies, where do they not go? 
What traces do they leave behind them in 
the lands they visit? What picture of Chris- 



ASCENDED. 247 

tian manhood do they paint for the peoples with 
whom they have intercourse? 

This is the era in the Church when lay workers 
are brought to the front, to stand side by side 
with the clergyman in the great struggle. In 
ministering to the poor, in the cause of temper- 
ance, and even in preaching the Word in cottage 
and street and mine, and sometimes in the Sab- 
bath assembly, the layman is actively at work. 
Nor is he idle on the sea. There are pious sail- 
ors who make their ships a Bethel, and who, free- 
handed, bear the printed Bible and the instructive 
book to the nations whose language they cannot 
speak. The faces of such hardy sailors, telling 
of body subject to spirit, and both gladly devoted 
to the Lord, must mike an impression wherever 
they are seen. Alas that there are so few such 
workers among the men of the sea ! Let the 
quiet dwellers on land do their part to increase 
this missionary band. Let them provide more 
Christian homes for Jack in their own great 
cities, in which he can be protected from temp- 
tation. Let such homes be ready for him in 
foreign ports, where, in the warm gush of glad- 
ness at being on shore again, he may have his 
heart taught to lift itself in thankfulness to the 
God who preserved him from the dangers of 
the sea, and to devote himself henceforward to 
the faithful service of the Captain of our Sal- 



248 OUR ELDER BROTHER. 

vation. Let him there be reminded of his 
mother's teaching and his mother's prayers. 
Let good books be provided for the quiet mo- 
ments of the sailor on board ship, books to keep 
him from unprofitable talk and amusements, and 
to give him a happy, instructive hour, and books, 
above all, to lead him in the way of life. 

Let the seaman be properly ministered to by 
the landsman, and we shall have a band of self- 
supporting missionaries who will bear the Gos- 
pel to every shore, and show the unbeliever the 
living Christian man. 

Many stay-at-home Christians have awakened 
to a sense of their duty towards the honest tars, 
but more must be done. Let us each and all 
have a part in truly Christianizing the men of 
the sea, who ever on their watery path are going 
"far hence to the Gentiles." 



IX. 

CHEER. 

Be of good cheer, Paul — Acts xxiii. 11. 
He calleth his own sheep by name, — John x. 3. 

HEDGED round by danger, how welcome it 
must have been to the great apostle to 
hear in the night the voice of his Master saying, 
"Be of goodcheer, Paul ! " To be called by name 
as brother speaks to brother ! 

In the midst of sorrows, discouragements, and 
temptations, let the child of God put his own 
familiar name in the place of Paul's, and listen 
to the Lord Jesus saying, "Be of good cheer, 

!" What trial would seem unendurable 

could you hear such a voice so speaking? Take 
hold gladly of the idea that you are not simply 
to the Lord as a stumbling follower, but as 
yourself, in all your individuality. By name 
you are known and loved by your Elder Brother 
in heaven. 

"God is no respecter of persons." From our 
fellow-men we have titles of honor, or perhaps 



250 OUR ELDER BROTHER. 

terms of contempt. From the palace to the 
poorhouse, from the crowned monarch to the 
crippled beggar, all are the same to the Lord, 
sinful human beings in need of a Saviour and 
Friend, He knows each of His wandering 
children by name. 

How pleasant it is to the aged Christian who 
has seen his generation pass away, no one left 
to call him by the name of his boyhood, to re- 
member that he is the same to the Lord Jesus as 
in his early days. His name is known in heaven, 
and the Lord is ever at his side to whisper, "Be 
of good cheer, — — ! " 

And what was the consolation given to Paul to 
encourage him to good cheer? His present dan- 
ger was to pass by, but no flowery future was 
promised him. He was to have the privilege of 
witnessing for his Master at Eome, as he had 
witnessed for Him at Jerusalem. More life, 
more service, and more suffering were in store 
for him, therefore must he be of good cheer. 

How often it happens that in the midst of ac- 
tive life, some faithful laborer is by the force of 
circumstances suddenly removed from his field 
of usefulness, and placed in a position where he 
is more like a caged creature than a free man. 
His natural powers seem deprived of their law- 
ful action, his zeal but a burning pain within. 

Let such a desponding soul hear the words, 



ASCENDED. 251 

"Be of good cheer, ! for as thou hast testified 

of Me in Jerusalem, so must thou bear witness*' 
also at Kome ! " Patiently wait, and the time 
of usefulness will come again. God has no un- 
necessary tools in His workshop. They are all 
to be employed when and where it seemeth Him 
best. 

" Be of good cheer ! " is the motto for the whole 
Church, collectively as well as for each individ- 
ual by name. Sin and unbelief may seem to 
prosper and threaten to triumph, but the great 
day must come when the Lord shall reign King 
of Nations, as He is King of Saints ! 

"Be of good cheer! " Pass it along the lines 
of the laborers in the great vineyard, weary with 
toil, and speaking drearily of the blighted har- 
vest ! B/ing it out for the lone missionary in the 
far foreign land! Whisper it to the humble 
women ministering by sick-beds and in the 
homes of want ! Say to them all, " Your labor is 
accepted, and in due time you shall reap an abun- 
dant blessing ! " 

And you, ye followers of the Light of the 
World, what brightness are you casting around 
your earthly path? Do you so rejoice in the 
Lord that you are sunshine in your home? Are 
you sour or bitter or murmuring for the ears for 
which you speak in your daily walk and conver- 
sation? Are you cast down by trifles and dis- 



252 OUR ELDER BROTHER. 

couraged by slight obstacles? Have you no 
*hope or consolation but success in the undertak- 
ings of the present hour? If this scheme or that 
enterprise should fail, would your all be lost? 
Have you no Heavenly Friend? Have you no 
hope beyond this fleeting life? If you are de- 
jected, momentarily wrecked by every chafing 
disappointment, how are you different from a 
heathen in the same case? Have you no stay 
for small troubles as well as for great? Think 
you are spoken to by name, and to you the ex- 
hortation is, " Be of good cheer, ! " Be cheer- 
ful in your daily life. Have the sunny face 
and the glad heart that befit the child of God 
journeying heavenward. 

If the small cares and disappointments and 
mortifications of your common life so destroy 
your peace, can it be that your treasure is in 
heaven? On what is your heart fixed, and what 
is the source of your joy? 

"Kejoice in the Lord, and again I say unto 
you, rejoice ! " Wear a cheerful face, because 
you have a happy heart, unmoved by the passing 
cares and annoyances of earthly life. Be o£ 
good cheer, and you will be a source of cheer. 
Let your light so shine that you will lighten 
your household and home with the brightness 
reflected from the Sun of Righteousness ! 



X. 

WEAKNESS. 

My strength is made perfect in weakness. — 2 Cor. xii. 9. 

" ]\ yf Y strength is made perfect in weakness. " 
iV-L Another of the precious utterances of the 
ascended Lord to the Apostle Paul, Paul's treas- 
ure first, and then a rich inheritance for all 
believers. 

Weakness of body is generally considered a 
condition cutting off truly the possibility of 
lively pleasure, but happy in its freedom from 
positive pain. This is in many cases a true de- 
scription. There can, however, be weakness to 
such an extent that soul and body seem to have 
lost the powers of organized life. There is no 
tension anywhere. All is relaxed. The mind is 
incapable of consecutive thought. The body 
shrinks from the slightest exertion. There is a 
weariness, an exhaustion, that is positively and 
painfully felt through the whole frame. An 
overwhelming sense of helplessness fills the eyes 



254 OUR ELDER BROTHER. 

with tears, and drops the jaw in a powerless- 
ness that is almost imbecility. The slightest in- 
terest in anything is so great an exertion that it 
beads the forehead with a cold perspiration that 
creeps like a chilly mist over the whole body and 
wraps the sufferer round, perhaps when he is 
alone in the dark night, with what seems like the 
very atmosphere of the cold, damp grave. Even 
at this climax there can come to the soul the 
comforting thought of the sympathy of the cruci- 
fied Saviour. Human friends may talk lightly 
of this kind of suffering, or bid the patient be 
thankful it is not actual pain. The stricken 
invalid silently remembers Him whose sweat in 
the solemn garden was as great drops of blood, 
and who endured the long-drawn death of sacred 
Calvary. Our Lord feels for the weak as well 
as the tortured, and He can give a strength that 
is made perfect in weakness, a victory over 
nature that He best can understand. 

The patient, loving smile of many a weak, 
wasted sufferer has been registered in heaven as 
a triumph as great as that which is courageously 
won on a bloody battle-field or in some strong 
man's struggle with a besetting sin. 

There is, too, a spiritual weakness that is hard 
to bear, humiliating as it is, when the victim 
comes to a full consciousness of his condition. 
He sees himself overcome by the slightest temp- 



ASCENDED. 255 

tation, now tossed by doubt, now harassed by a 
vacillating, unsteady purpose, — beginnings of 
good ending in a return to old habits of evil, — 
prayers begun in earnestness, but dispersed into 
wandering, unconnected thoughts of pleasure or 
care or sin. How many such a weak penitent 
has cried out in despair, "Wretched man that 
I am, who shall deliver me from the body of 
this death?" Here, also, the strength of the 
Lord may be made perfect in weakness. Let 
such a one remember the words of the great 
apostle, " When I am weak, then am I strong. " 
Strong he was as the child is who lets himself 
be tenderly led by a wise and loving hand. He 
clasps that hand closely, takes one step at a 
time, without anxiously looking forward, fear- 
ing to fall. Conscious of weakness, the totter- 
ing, unstable Christian leans on Him who is 
mighty to save, leans trustfully, leans ever, goes 
forward, and is safe ! 

As it is with the weak Christian, so is it with 
the weak invalid. The sufferer from debility 
must cherish no fears for the future, must not 
think even of the endurance of the next hour. 
The present is sufficient. For the present, strength 
will be given. The hand may hang down feebly, 
the soul may seem unable to seek courage or 
help, but " underneath are the Everlasting 
Arms." He who is like the shepherd who 



256 OUR ELDER BROTHER. 

u bears the lambs in his bosom and gently leads 
them that are with young " can carry you home, 
poor trembling one, unable even to lean on the 
Strong Stay. He who could speak so graciously 
to His ancient people, He who " bore and carried 
them all the days of old," will gently support 
you, as the eagle taketh her young on her wings 
and soars with them from mountain-top to 
mountain-top. "In quietness and confidence is 
your strength!" Your strength will be made 
perfect in weakness, and all the glory will be 
to Him who has loved us and has given Himself 
for us with an everlasting love. 



XI. 

PEIESTS. 
We have a Great High Priest. — Heb. iv. 14. 

AMONG the strongest ties that bind man to 
man is the bond that is knit between the 
soul and its spiritual father, that other soul that 
has led it go the cross, and is its guide towards 
heaven. Here there is always the danger of the 
blind devotion of the beginner in the Christian 
life, who looks up to his experienced friend or 
pastor as almost inspired, a saint upon earth, a 
necessary medium between him and God. 

Even apostles must exclaim, " We are men of 
like passions as ye are! " in repelling the idola- 
trous worship thrust upon them. 

A perfect priesthood is what all who would be 
themselves holy earnestly long for. God be 
praised, there are in all the churches men so 
sanctified that they are lifted as near heaven 
as is possible for poor human nature here below. 
We may love them and trust them and profit 

17 



258 OUR ELDER BROTHER. 

by their ministry, but we are not to set them on 
a pinnacle to be adored, or imagine that this or 
that man is necessary for our real growth in the 
spiritual life. 

Strange to say, this devotedness to the hand 
that has led a man into the right path may de- 
generate into a selfish appropriation of the wise 
teacher. A lawful reverence and affection may 
be blended with the low spirit of contention 
between "mine" and "thine." "My pastor is 
the best," is the declaration too often heard in 
spirit, if not exactly so couched in words. All 
other preachers and Christian teachers must be 
depreciated, criticised, and, if possible, brought 
to contempt, to exalt the one man who has had 
the power to reach the soul of the speaker. 
Away with this kind of monopolizing of one 
noble instrument for good! 

Devout clergymen suffer much from this blind 
devotion and foolish adulation. They want no 
flattering words after an earnest appeal, but the 
fruit in human souls of humble penitence and 
holy faith. 

The priests of earth must have their own con- 
flicts, but our High Priest, who stands ever in 
the presence of God for us, is without sin. He 
need offer no sacrifice for Himself. He is the 
pure offering, sufficient for the sins of the whole 
world. 



ASCENDED. 259 

We can imagine the solemn hush among the 
Jewish worshippers when once a year the high 
priest entered alone into the holy of holies, 
there to present the appointed sacrifice for his 
own sins and the sins of his people, in the 
presence of the Perfect and Almighty God. 
In helpless unworthiness the penitents stood 
without. So we stand here in our earthly lot. 
We are not yet admitted to the glory above, but 
there we have our Surety, our Representative, 
our Intercessor, our Elder Brother, who "appear- 
eth in the presence of God for us." Our poor 
prayers are for His sake accepted. He is 
touched with a feeling for our infirmities, for 
He was tempted in all points like as we are, 
yet without sin. He offers again His loving 
prayer, the trustful wish of His divine yet 
human heart, "Father, I will that they also 
whom Thou hast given Me be with Me where I 
am." "Seeing, then, that we have a Great High 
Priest that is passed into the heavens, Jesus the 
Son of God, let us hold fast our profession. . . . 
Let us therefore come boldly unto the throne 
of grace, that we may obtain mercy, and find 
grace to help in time of need." Let us re- 
member the blessed words, "He is able also to 
save them to the uttermost that come unto 
God by Him, seeing He ever liveth to make 
intercession for them." 



260 OUR ELDER BROTHER. 

Our High Priest shall come again to us from 
the great holy of holies. Then will he seal the 
full forgiveness He has even for us, with the 
glad words, "Come, ye blessed of my Father, 
inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the 
foundation of the world ! " 



XII. 
CHUKCHES AND CHURCH-MEMBERS. 

/, Jesus, have sent mine angel to testify unto you these 
things in the churches, — Rev. xxii. 16. 

THERE are many who propose to reform 
churches. There are few who are in 
earnest about reforming themselves. If you 
find yourself in a church where you think de- 
vout, consistent Christians are few, make it your 
business soberly and solemnly to see to it that 
you are, in thought, word, and deed, living up 
to your own high standard of discipleship. 

It may be that if you should go over to some 
other branch of the Church Catholic, or some 
other parish or congregation, you might find 
that what you most needed was not a change in 
church association, but the prayer of the con- 
verted Indian, "Lord, save me from that bad 
man, myself! " 

Stay where you are if your objection to your 
church be the low state of piety among its mem- 
bers. If you think you have light, why not let 
it shine in what you consider a dark place? Go 



262 OUR ELDER BROTHER. 

forward yourself in the Christian life! Take 
those around you by the hand, — your wife, your 
children, your servants, your employees, your 
friends, — and lead them, if you can, to a nobler, 
more Christ-like walk and conversation! You 
cannot, butterfiy-like, flit hither and thither 
to enjoy your Christian course, your Christian 
feelings. You are to do the most good you can 
in your day and generation. Do you want to 
move your little candle into what you consider 
the full sunshine? Better that it should give light 
to your own house, the "household of faith," 
where the Providence of God has placed you. 

A wise man has said, " The difficulties in this 
world are not so much the faults of organizations 
for high purposes, as in being able to find noble, 
holy men to make up such organizations, and 
wisely, fearlessly, and conscientiously to work 
in them and through them.' 7 Churches are not 
to be reformed wholesale. Changing people by 
the mass is no easy matter. Thousands are not 
converted in one day in our time. The true 
Christian advance is made by the slow, sure 
method of individual consecration to a life of 
holiness, and a faithful, consistent continuance 
in love to God and man, and humble obedience 
to law, human and divine. 

Some complainers like to lay on the clergy the 
blame of the shortcomings of Christian churches. 



ASCENDED. 263 

A devout people will not long endure a clergy 
worldly or wicked. The clergy are, as it were, 
the blossom, the fruit of the plant, its ultimate 
result. As is the root, so will be the flower. 
As is the Church at large, so will the clergy be. 
Let the private Christians see to themselves that 
they are walking in the way of life, and there 
will grow up from among them, even at their 
own hearthstones, men who will preach with 
power, and live the holy life which becometh 
them who minister at the altar. 

For individual self-examination and individ- 
ual reformation there is no better guide for lay- 
man or priest than the searching words of the 
Master as He addressed the Seven Churches of 
Asia. The ascended Lord had spoken to dis- 
ciples and apostles singly and severally, and 
now He comes with counsel and correction for 
the churches at large, for all time, collectively 
and separately. 

" He that hath an ear, let him hear what the 
Spirit saith unto the churches." This solemn 
trumpet giveth no uncertain sound. It is " On- 
ward, Christian soldier," through and through. 

The message to the churches is for each indi- 
vidual member. The body is but an association 
of parts imbued with one life. So was it of old 
in Smyrna and Pergamos, in Sardis, in Phila- 
delphia, in Thyatira, in Ephesus, in Laodicea. 



264 OUR ELDER BROTHER. 

That same message is addressed to us now. 
Somewhere in its warnings, as in its encour- 
agements, there is a whisper to the soul of each 
one of us personally, and to the church of which 
we are a part. May God give us the grace to 
understand and to take home the needed lesson, 
to oar instruction and growth in the religious 
life ! Let us listen with the willing ear and the 
bowed head and the humble, penitent cry, "Lord, 
is it I?" even though at a Judas may be pointed 
the reproachful finger of the Kedeemer. 

And what has our Lord to say to us? Is there 
a Christian, filled with devout love and earnest 
zeal in the early days of his consecration, who 
has lost his first joy and devotedness amid the 
pleasures and cares and fond affections of this 
lower world? For him is the word, "Remember 
therefore from whence thou art fallen, and re- 
pent, and do the first works ; or else I will come 
unto thee quickly, and will remove thy candle- 
stick out of his place." What might sudden 
death be to the dull and darkened believer? If 
such wandering children really repent, even to 
them is promised that they shall "eat of the tree 
of life which is in the midst of the Paradise of 
God." 

Is there a Christian whose works praise him 
who has passed through tribulation? Let him 
not boast himself as if his victory were already 



ASCENDED. 265 

won. There may be more trouble in store for 
him. He must be faithful unto death, and then 
he will receive a "crown of life," — a life that 
knows no "second death." 

Is there a Christian living in the midst of 
them who love not God, who has yet kept the 
faith, and so fancies himself perfectly pure in 
doctrine and life? The Lord has "a few things " 
against him. He too must search his heart and 
repent, if he will not have the Lord "fight 
against him with the sword of his mouth." If 
he overcome, there are for him precious blessings, 
no promises that will gratify his pride or raise 
him publicly above his fellows, but a "new 
name,'- 1 secretly given, that shall speak the ap- 
proval of his Lord. " Let him that thinketh he 
standeth take heed lest he fall ! " 

Even the Christian to whom the Lord might 
say, " I know thy works and charity and service 
and faith and thy patience and thy works," may 
have a "few things" against him, hidden things 
known only to "the Son of God, who hath His eyes 
like unto a flame of fire." Faults, sins, tempta- 
tions, that lurk deep down in the heart, must 
be burned out, given up in humble repentance. 
The good already done must not be relied on. 
There must be a continuance in well-doing, and 
the remembrance of the warning, "Hold fast 
till I come!" 



266 OUR ELDER BROTHER. 

Is there a Christian who has " a name to live 
and is dead," if he be not awakened by the voice 
of his Master? His "works are not perfect be- 
fore God." The little good that is in him is 
ready to die. There may be one who has a name 
to live on earth as a Christian, and yet he is 
already blotted out of the Book of Life ! Re- 
member, thou who art fair without and foul 
within, "how thou hast received and heard, and 
hold fast and repent. If therefore thou shalt 
not watch, I will come on thee as a thief, and 
thou shalt not know what hour I will come 
upon thee." 

Is there a Christian who " has a little strength " ? 
He knows his weakness, however he may win the 
praise of men, and even the approval of his Lord. 
Be encouraged, faltering, trembling disciple. Here 
it is feebleness and stumbling, inward fears and 
outward falls. Above, thou shalt be "a pillar in 
the temple of thy God," something stable, fast, 
and sure. Thou shalt "go no more out." Thou 
shalt be marked with the name of thy God, as 
a sheep is marked with the name of his master. 
Thou wilt be at home in the New Jerusalem, 
safely folded at last! 

Is there a so-called Christian who has no sus- 
picion that all is not right with him, whose boast 
is, "I am rich, I lack nothing," while he is "poor 
and blind and naked "? Baptized into the Church 



ASCENDED. 267 

of Christ, trained in sound doctrine and dogma, 
admitted to the sacred Supper of the Lord, he 
fancies his path the straightest road to heaven. 
He is yet a miserable outcast, a prodigal in his 
clays of revelling. Happy if he awake to know 
that he is blind and hungry and naked, and to 
turn towards the home of the Merciful Father. 
The door is not yet closed. The door is never 
closed to the true penitent. From the depths of 
His love the Lord will say to this self-satisfied 
disciple, " I counsel thee to buy of me gold tried 
in the fire, that thou mayest be rich ; and white 
raiment, that thou mayest be clothed, and that 
the shame of thy nakedness do not appear; and 
anoint thine eyes with eye-salve, that thou 
mayest see." It is the echo of the old appeal, 
"Why will ye die, ye house of Israel?" The 
Lord in His love may rebuke thee with sorrow 
and chasten thee with sore disappointment. 
He may awake thee with bitter pains, or show 
thee the face of sudden death, to rouse thee 
to a knowledge of thy condition. Once knowing 
thy poverty, thy shame, once repentant and 
humbled, the Lord will receive thee to be His 
fore verm ore. 

To "overcome," — that is the exhortation that 
rings out again and again from the " voice like . 
many waters." It is only to "him that over- 
cometh," not to him that goes bravely at first 



268 OUR ELDER BROTHER. 

into the battle, that rich rewards are promised. 
Finally, the pledge is given, "To him that over- 
cometh will I grant to sit with Me in my throne, 
even as I also overcame, and am set down with 
My Father in His throne." 

Our merciful Elder Brother knows the diffi- 
culties and dangers of the way. He has tried 
our human life. He knows what it costs to 
overcome. He longs to say to us all, "Come, ye 
blessed of My Father, inherit the kingdom pre- 
pared for you before the foundation of the 
word ! " 

Lord, make us ready for Thy coming ! Wash 
us from our sins ! Sanctify us by Thy grace \ 
Clothe us with the white garments of Thy right- 
eousness ! Eeceive us into Thine Everlasting 
Kingdom ! 



Coming 3tgaitn 

I. A Glad Welcome. 
II. The Judge. 



Coming %ain, 

i. 

A GLAD WELCOME. 

Behold, the Lord cometh with ten thousand of His saints. 

JlJDE 14. 

"XT 7*HAT affectionate father, returning suddenly 
V V after a long absence, would like to have his 
children, instead of rejoicing at the sound of his 
footsteps, shrink away in terror, remembering 
their own wrong-doings, and fearing his pitiless 
wrath? Yet this is the spirit in which many 
believers honestly think of the coming of our 
Lord Jesus in the clouds of heaven. They fancy 
that humility is the ground of all their fears. 
Is it not rather their habitual unbelief in the 
willingness of God to forgive freely, and to grant 
abundantly the grace that shall transform the 
true follower into the likeness of his Master? 

This timid, affrighted spirit was not inculcated 
by the Lord when on earth, nor afterwards by 
His disciples. The servants and friends of the 



272 OUR ELDER BROTHER. 

Bridegroom were to watch truly, and never relax 
in their faithful preparations for His coming, 
but they were to account that coming a cause 
of rejoicing. They were eagerly to meet Him, 
and comfort one another in tribulation with the 
promise of His glad appearing. 

That great Advent, though described in words 
of majesty, is yet to be in the familiar beauty of 
the clouds of heaven, that can even now glow at 
the sunset hour with a transcendent richness of 
coloring and a mysterious, wonderful light that 
might well surround the triumphant return of our 
Lord and King. 

He who gave us the blessing of family affec- 
tion, the dear ties of friendship, and an enthusi- 
asm for the great and good of bygone times, has 
not left out this human element in the joy of 
His coming. He is not to be alone, or only ac- 
companied by those sinless, far-off beings, the 
holy angels. Even from the time of "Enoch 
the seventh from Adam," it was promised that 
the Lord should come to judge the world, with 
ten thousand of His saints about Him. 

As in the pictures of some of the old painters 
the Madonna and the Infant Jesus may be seen 
looking out from a mist of sweet child-angels or 
cherubs, so we can imagine our Lord at His 
coming encompassed by the beautiful faces of 
our human brethren, "the just made perfect," 



COMING AGAIN. 273 

their features luminous with the sacred bright- 
ness that may even now seem to transfigure the 
countenances of devout souls after long and true 
communion with God. Nor will those holy faces 
all be new and strange to us. Our dead who 
have passed from among us will be with the 
Lord at His coming. Beaming from eyes accus- 
tomed to see our Elder Brother and behold His 
glory will be their old love for us, increased, 
sanctified, perfected. Those eyes will be lit with 
glad recognition and the blessed knowledge that 
our trials and temptations are over, and we 
too are to taste the full blessedness in the pres- 
ence of the Divine Master. 

We sometimes shrink under the nervous fear 
of physical death, the wrenching asunder of 
body and soul, and the entering into a new state 
of existence. The valley of the shadow may 
perhaps be made dark to us by the thought of 
the friends we must leave to mourn and struggle, 
it may be, unprotected and unprovided for, when 
we are summoned to glory. We may have great 
plans for good, unrealized or uncompleted, that 
we feel it would be hard to leave begun and 
never finished. These misgivings must not be 
cherished. Our end may be the end and solemn 
closing of this earthly drama. We may have 
no death in store for us, no separation from loved 
ones, no career of usefulness cut short. 

18 



274 OUR ELDER BROTHER. 

The time of the Lord's coining is the secret of 
the Father. We may have no future beyond the 
present hour. The sun, now high in the heavens, 
may have no common setting; it may pale before 
the brightness of the Sun of Eighteousness. 

Let us be found faithful in the little duties 
committed to our charge. Let us be among those 
who "love the Lord's appearing." Let us so 
live that from a joyful heart we may answer to 
the great announcement, "Lo, I come!" "Even 
so, come, Lord Jesus ! " 



II. 

THE JUDGE. 

The Lord Jesus Christ, who shall judge the quick and the 
dead at His appearing. — 2 Timothy iv. 1 . 

AMONG the untold secrets of sensitive child- 
hood, hidden in the little quivering heart, 
are those sudden wakings from sound sleep, in 
the dead of night, with a strong conviction that 
something terrible is happening. "Perhaps it 
is the Judgment Day ! " whispers the accusing 
conscience. Real sins and small peccadilloes, 
in indiscriminate confusion, rise up before the 
memory of the affrighted child, filling it with 
a vague feeling of unutterable horror. The sub- 
lime picture of the solemn throne and the un- 
speakable glory of the Divine Presence flashes 
on the mind. The child, in dread waiting, hides 
its head till, strange to say, nature comes to its 
aid with the same sweet sleep as before that 
startled waking. The angels again watch over 
the little culprit, who opens his eyes in the morn- 
ing refreshed, and with only a dim remembrance 



276 OUR ELDER BROTHER. 

of that wild, troubled hour, as of a passing 
dream. 

More terrible is the awakening which some- 
times comes in maturer years, in a critical mo- 
ment of utmost danger, or in the quiet sick-room, 
when the possible peril of the patient is written 
on the anxious faces round his bed. Here is 
often the same bewilderment as in the case of 
the child, — a sense of general sinfulness and cer- 
tain doom, rather than penitence for particular 
sins and a sincere prayer for pardon. There 
may be a real call for mercy, and an honest 
purpose to lead a new life in case of recov- 
ery or escape from danger. More often it is a 
spurious conversion, like that of the wicked 
sailor who prays for help during his swift fall 
from the rigging, but resumes his cursing and 
his old life as soon as his feet firmly touch the 
deck. 

A sudden deathbed repentance is always pos- 
sible. The recovery of such apparent converts 
shows too often, however, that their temporary 
religiosity has been but a self-seeking, a longing 
for safety, with no horror of sin, and no true 
acceptance of our Lord as Saviour and Example 
and Purifier. 

Doubtless, on the other side, there have been 
many sufferers who in the retirement of a pro- 
tracted illness have passed from death unto life, 



COMING AGAIN. 277 

and yet, through the weakness of mind and body 
consequent upon extreme prostration, have been 
unable to breathe even to the fond friends beside 
them a word of their new hope, or the separation 
they believe to be so near. The patient knows 
he could not bear a conversation that would 
deeply move him. He undertakes it no more 
than he does to get up and go about his room 
as usual. A wistful eye, a meaning glance, or 
a pressure of the hand may be all of which he 
is capable, save the sweet patience and loving- 
ness that spring from a heart renewed. Our 
friends who have gone from us without a word 
of a new hope or a new Master may have been 
welcomed by rejoicing angels, and received to 
the kingdom of the Father by the merciful Son, 
who has seen their deep penitence and accepted 
their helpless reliance on Him at the eleventh 
hour. 

What have old, experienced Christians to offer 
at the great tribunal after their years of stum- 
bling along the narrow path? What but the 
"full, perfect, and sufficient sacrifice" of the 
Lamb once ottered for the sins of the world? 

For that great day when the secrets of all 
hearts shall be revealed, and the dead, small and 
great, shall stand before God, He has reserved a 
token of His infinite loving-kindness. One may 
have been long in the Christian life before one 



278 OUR ELDER BROTHER. 

fully grasps the precious truth, known theoreti- 
cally from childhood, that it is by Christ Jesus 
"that Man whom He has ordained," that God 
will judge the world. He who was " tempted in 
all points like as we are, " He who has been child 
and youth and man, He who has had bitter ene- 
mies and faithless friends, He who washed the 
feet of His unstable disciples, — He, our Elder 
Brother, is to judge the poor children of earth, 
for whom He was willing to leave His Father's 
Home of glory and suffer a malefactor's death ! 

He who has heard our first faltering prayer 
to be led in the right way, He who has known 
our sins and our repentance, He who has accepted 
our poor offering of ourselves and all we are, 
and has been pleased to acknowledge us as His 
own, He who has companied with us all the days 
of our pilgrimage, He on whom we have leaned 
in sorrow and sickness and approaching death, — 
will not desert us when we stand before the great 
white throne, awaiting our final sentence. Be- 
cause we are His, we shall share His home, and 
to His great name be the glory ! 

And what revelation have we of the test of 
discipleship in that awful hour? We hear of no 
questionings as to devout frames and glowing 
feelings, no mention but as warning, of having 
prophesied in His name. 

What, then, is the test? 



COMING AGAIN. 279 

Christ has left on earth His types, His substi- 
tutes, His ambassadors, — the poor, the stranger, 
the widow, and the fatherless, — the helpless and 
distressed of the human race. What is written? 
" Inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the 
least of these my brethren, ye have done it unto 
Me!" 

Searching, solemn, condemning words ! Lord, 
"deal not with us according to our sins, neither 
reward us according to our iniquities ! " Give 
us all grace to love as brethren, and share with 
glad, grateful hearts the blessings Thou in mercy 
hast given us ! Make us so to trust and follow 
Thee that we may dare to meet Thee, our Re- 
deemer, as our Judge and King ! 



I. Eest. 
II. The Bride. 
III. The Holy City. 



I. 

BEST. 

And so shall we be ever with the Lord. — 1 Thess. iv. 17. 

TO be constantly in the society of the best be- 
loved is for many human hearts the ideal 
of joy. It is for this the bride is willing to 
leave the sheltering arms of her mother, the 
well-tried faithful care of her father, and all the 
dear associations of her childhood's home. 

And what; is the result for the newly married 
pair? If their union has been founded on true, 
affection, deep congenialitj^, and a common holy 
end and aim, both may find a happiness beyond 
what they ever dreamed of, — a happiness so pure 
and deep that it is wonderful that it is left in 
this poor world, for mere mortals to enjoy. 

All this is true, but the expectation to be 
always with the beloved object is in this case a 
passing delusion. Time wears on, and the young 



284 OUR ELDER BROTHER. 

husband, if lie be a man to do his work in his 
day and generation, becomes involved in cares 
and interests and efforts that must take him 
during many hours of the day from the hearth- 
stone. He returns, perhaps weary or perplexed 
or pre-occupied, his wife not his one thought, 
not even his time to be wholly offered to her, in 
his so-called leisure hours. Nor is she always 
ready for that endless tete-a-tete of her girlish 
imagination. A mother's cares and privileges 
have probably come upon her. Her little ones 
claim her attention and ever-increasing interest. 
They gather around her, each developing new 
needs, according to its age, and requiring a 
different training, adapted to its peculiar char- 
acter and abilities. 

The glad pair who started out to journey to- 
gether hand-in-hand have found out that their 
life is no lingering pleasure promenade. It is a 
path thick-set with individual duties, where each 
must walk faithfully, gratefully welcoming the 
short time for mutual sympathy and converse 
that may be left amid the thronging occupations 
of every-day life. 

There must come change and disappointment 
and sorrow to the Christian home, yet there we 
have the best idea and image of the eternal rest, 
where love will be the foundation of joy, and the 
presence of the Great Friend our highest bliss, 



IN GLORY. 285 

and the glad fulfilment of His commands our 
ceaseless employment. 

"There remaineth a rest for the people of 
God," but we are not to suppose it to be a state 
of self-indulgence and inactivity. " The Father 
worketh hitherto/' and the angels are minister- 
ing spirits. Occupation will, no doubt, be pro- 
vided for us, adapted to our new sphere and our 
new powers. With the universe at command, 
there will be no lack of space or opportunity for 
noble exertion. 

Beauty and joy in abundance will, no doubt, 
be found in heaven. If here, in our poor school- 
room, we have the surpassing charms of nature 
in its manifold forms, above, where tasks have 
become willing service and discipline reward, 
what gladness there will be in obedience, what 
joy in exploring the wonders of God's endless 
creation ! 

Even the Home, where power and holiness and 
love are the essence of the Great Being who is 
the centre of its exalted bliss, would lose much 
of its blessedness if there we should be sub- 
ject to change and uncertainty. How shadowed 
would be the brightest joy if the soul in the 
midst of its transports must echo its old cry in 
its sorrows, "How long, Lord? How long?" 
The fixedness of our heavenly state, to be "ever 
with the Lord," is the great element of eternal 



286 OUR ELDER BROTHER. 

rest. The very thought brings a sweet restful? 
ness to our weary souls, here " tossed on life's 
tempestuous ocean." Let us take this great 
promise for our comfort amid the accepted dis- 
appointments and instabilities of our earthly 
home. Our longing shall at last be satisfied. 
We shall be ever with the Lord. 

Let us see to it that we have characters, tastes, 
and affections modelled after our Elder Brother, 
who has gone before us and opened the way to 
the Heavenly Mansions. 

A stranger cannot come home to the Father's 
house. It is only His child who can know that 
joy. Let us not be distant, suspicious strangers 
towards our loving Lord, but here obedient, 
trustful children; and then none of us will come 
short of entering into the rest that remaineth for 
the people of God. 



II. 

THE BRIDE. 

The marriage of the Lamb has come, and His wife has 
made herself ready. — Rev. xix. 7. 

NO royal bridegroom who makes his wife a 
queen bestows on her as great an honor as 
that which she shares with the humblest maid 
who takes the marriage vows. Our Lord has set 
the human bride as a type of the invisible 
Church, the redeemed souls who are to be His 
in His eternal home. 

He has chosen them, and they have given their 
free consent to be His, and His alone. 

What a whisper this is for the earthly bride 
on her marriage morning ! She is to be an image 
of the sanctified Church of God, to be one day 
presented to the Lord " without spot or wrinkle 
or any such thing." Wha/fc a motive for one who 
is leaving her girlhood behind her, to leave with 
it her old faults, her old sins, and to begin her 
new life in charity and faith, in childlike reli- 
ance on God alone, determined to be in the 



288 OUR ELDER BROTHER. 

coming relation holier and therefore happier 
than ever before. 

The humblest bride comes not to the altar in 
the every-day dress of this working world. 
Adorned as befits the occasion, she is given to 
her husband not even in the garments that have 
served for this feast or that merry-making. 
There must be the freshness as of a new creation 
about her. She is leaving her past behind her. 
All things for her are to be new. In how many 
lands she wears the modest veil that sets her 
apart ! She is already not her own, not belong- 
ing in the same sense as before to her family 
and friends and the outer world. She is to be 
given to him whose name she is to bear, and 
whose home is to be henceforward hers. 

And the Bride, the Church of Christ? Because 
she is loved, because she has been bought at the 
price of the Bridegroom's humiliations and suf- 
ferings, and is confident of her welcome to His 
Home, is she in a kind of slipshod indifference 
to await in her earth-stained garments the com- 
ing of the Lord? Is she to look forward to the 
sound of the solemn trump with a kind of self- 
sufficient composure, as if it were an every-day 
affair? Not so do we learn from the Scriptures. 
It is written, "The marriage of the Lamb has 
come, and His wife has made herself ready." 

There is a presumption that speaks of the 



IN GLORY. 289 

abounding love of Christ and His free forgive- 
ness, as if we might continue in sin because 
grace has so abounded. Knowing that we have 
nought to fear, we must still have a horror of 
sin, a tender sensitiveness that there may be no 
taint on our bridal garment, itself the gift of the 
Lord. 



19 



III. 

THE HOLY CITY. 

The Holy City, New Jerusalem. — Rev. xxi. 22. 

T^HE Bible is full of surprises for us. It 
does not seem strange that the story of 
man, like the history of civilization, should 
begin in the open air, with human beings sur- 
rounded by fruitful trees, and in free companion- 
ship with nature in all its forms. That the story 
of man should end, like the history of civilization, 
in the magnificent city, is indeed a surprise. 

Cities, as we know them, do not seem to give 
us an image of the Home of the Blessed. Yet 
in the promise of the Holy City, New Jerusalem, 
we have forced upon us one of the great lessons 
of Christianity. The true religion is not a re- 
ligion of selfishness and solitude, but of love and 
sympathy and companionship. How can we de- 
scribe outward beauty to the blind? How can 
we make the deaf understand the loving, touch- 
ing cadences of the human voice, or the delight 
that gladdens the ear awake to music? What can 
we, mortals of clay, know of the glories of heaven, 



IN GLORY. 291 

or the joys of that holy place? Little indeed! 
It is only by its being likened to things with 
which we are familiar that we can catch a 
glimpse of its glory and purity. 

In the city we have the highest forms of de- 
velopment to which man can attain in works of 
beauty and splendor from the skilful hand or the 
thinking mind; yet it has its horrible taint of 
sin, — sin in its most rank and vigorous growth. 

In the Holy City there will be nothing that 
defileth, no dark and gloomy shadow. In the 
midst of its dazzling magnificence there will 
appear in its bright streets no long funeral train, 
with its solemn hearse and mocking pageantry. 
No mourners, no tears, no secret anguish will be 
there. There will be no care-wrinkled, sin- 
marked faces in the glad throngs of the golden 
streets. No one there will pine for dear ones 
across the wide ocean, for in the Holy City there 
will be "no more sea" to divide true hearts. 
There will be no crime there, no night when 
deeds are done that would shun detection and 
shame. 

The great evil of the earthly city that flour- 
ishes even in the daylight, will not enter the 
pearly gates. He that "loveth and maketh a 
lie " dare not venture within the jewelled walls 
of the New Jerusalem. 

The lie acted and spoken, that drags down the 



292 OUR ELDER BROTHER. 

soul of the man of business, will not be there. 
The social lie, that speaks fair words, when the 
heart is full of bitterness, or that flatters and 
cringes to win the favor of those who have long 
purses or sit in high places, will not be there. The 
beggar's lie will not be there, to harden the heart 
of speaker and hearer. The religious lie will not 
be there. No one will solemnly promise in that 
Holy of Holies to keep the law of God and walk 
in purity and truth, and then turn thoughtlessly 
again to his old ways of folly or sin. No one 
will sit down to the supper of the Lamb, and rise 
up to profane His holy name. There will not be 
the acted lie of the worshippers who seem to 
pray and praise, while their thoughts are on 
pleasure or business or anxious care. No one 
there will be outwardly proper and seemly and 
righteous, with a foul and evil heart within. 

Away with the lie here, if we would live here- 
after in the glad presence of the God of Truth ! 

It is not alone in negatives that the Holy City 
is described. We have its walls flashing with 
jewels, its gates of pearls, its golden streets, its 
river that makes a garden in its midst, where 
trees with healing leaves bear perpetually their 
fruit in the glad light that knows no shadow. 

All that we can imagine of outward beauty will 
be there. " Eye hath not seen nor ear heard, 
neither hath it entered into the heart of man to 



IN GLORY. 293 

conceive the things which God hath prepared for 
them that love Him." 

This world with its worldliness will have 
passed away. The covetousness that is idolatry 
will find no place in the Holy City. The gar- 
ments given by the Lord our Eighteousness 
will be signs of purity, not of pride. "They 
that overcome shall walk with Him in white." 

The Lord God and the Lamb will be that City's 
light. There will be nothing to hide there. 
Accepted in the Elder Brother, the saints shall 
see the face of God, and not shrink from the 
All-seeing Eye, but rejoice in the light of His 
countenance. 

All happiness that is innocent will be there, all 
that is ennobling, exalting, all that is holy and pure. 

" The nations shall bring their glory and honor 
into it. 3STot that the torn standards captured in 
war, and the records of bloody victories, will be 
offered to God. The men who have really been 
an honor to their native land and its true glory, 
will be there. What converse there will be with 
the great and good of all time ! God's best 
works, noble souls ! " 

What worship there will be there ! Here, 
where we are but creatures of a day, some of us 
have heard in the great gatherings of Christians 
from the wide world, in the grandest of its cities, 
prayer and praise go up at once from thousands 



294 OUR ELDER BROTHER. 

of adoring worshippers, from every clime, an# 
can dimly, very dimly, imagine something of the 
chorus of holy halleluias in heaven ! 

There will be music there. God, who gave the 
human voice its sweet modulations, and formed 
the subtle laws of sounds that can be grouped to 
harmony and melody, will have music around 
His throne, music among the rejoicing saints and 
angels. 

There will be love in the Holy City. Earth's 
best joy will be there, exalted, purified, made 
holy and eternal. 

There we shall be with the Elder Brother, in 
His glory, as He was with us in His humiliation. 
There He who hath loved us, will love us unto 
the end. There we poor orphans of earth will 
find our Father, and be welcomed to His Home. 
There we shall be in the presence of our Al- 
mighty King, the All-powerful, the All-wise, 
whose name is Love. 

What a city that will be, "whose Builder and 
Maker is God " ! 

" Here we have no continuing city. " Cities rise, 
cities fall, and their inhabitants are as the dust of 
the earth. The Holy City, New Jerusalem, is the 
Eternal Home of the redeemed in Christ Jesus. 



INDEX ACCORDING TO TEXTS. 



before tfje fflBorto TOag, 



Self-Sacrifice. 

Creation. 
Steadfastness. 

Humility and 

Obedience. 



41 The glory which I had with the Father 

before the world was." 
"All things were made by Him." 
" The Lamb slain from the foundation of the 

world." 

""My Father." 



The Babe. 

The Child Jesus. 

Forms. 

A Name. 

A Wide Circle. 

Boys. 



a Gflttb. 

" The Babe lying in a manger." 

"Thy Holy Child Jesus." 

"Thus it becometh us to fulfil all righteous- 
ness." 

"Thou shalt call His name Jesus." 

" We have seen His star in the East, and 
are come to worship Him." 

" And He went down with them and came to* 
Nazareth, and was subject unto them." 



iWmfetertng. 

Temftation. " Himself having suffered, being tempted." 

Babes in Christ. "And He called unto Him whom He would, 
and they came unto Him." 



296 



INDEX ACCORDING TO TEXTS. 



Recreation. "And both Jesus was called and His dis- 

ciples to the wedding." 
Seekers. "Nicodemus, which at the first came to 

Jesus by night." 
Tired. "Jesus being wearied with His journey." 

Relatives. "And when Jesus was come into Peter's 

house, He saw his wife's mother laid, 

and sick of a fever." 
Faults. " Why are ye so fearful ? " 

Mourners. "He had compassion on her." 

bELF- Denial. " I will not send them away fasting, lest they 

faint by the way." 
Economy. " Gather up the fragments that remain, that 

nothing may be lost." 
Opposition. "Neither did His brethren believe on Him." 

Deformity. "Master, who did sin, this man or his 

parents, that he was born blind V " 
Parents. " Lord, have mercy on my son! " 

Seeming Death. "He is dead!" 
The Nursery. "Whoso receiveth one such little child in 

my name, receiveth me." 
The Capital. "He beheld the city, and wept over it." 

Workmen. "I have finished the work Thou gavest me 

to do." 
Constancy. "Having loved His own which were in the 

world, He loved them unto the end. 
Forgiveness. "Father, forgive them; the}' know not what 

they do." 
Trust. "Into Thy hands, I commend my spirit." 

ffrurifirt. 

" And sitting down, they watched Him there." 



The Grave. "They have taken away my Lord, and I 

know not where they have laid Him." 

In Remembrance. "In remembrance of Me." 

Vision. "Then were the disciples glad when they 

saw the Lord." 



INDEX ACCORDING TO TEXTS. 
By the Way. 



297 



"What manner of communications are these 
that ye have one to another ? " 
The Old Tes- 
tament. " Then opened He their understanding, that 
they might understand the Scriptures." 
The Sheep. l< Feed my lambs! Feed my sheep ! " 

Daily Bread. " Children, have ye any meat V " 



Lost and Found. 



A Miracle. 

Union. 
Dying Eyes. 



"He lifted up His hands, and blessed them. 

. . . While He blessed them, He was 

parted from them, and carried up into 

heaven V " 
" When the Comforter is come, whom I will 

send unto you from the Father." 
" That they may be one." 
"Behold, I see the heavens opened, and the 

Son of Man standing at the right hand 

of God!" 



A Voice from 

Heaven. 

Persecution. 

Penitents. 

Gentiles. 

Cheer. 
Weakness. 

Priests. 
Churches. 



"Much more shall not we escape if we turn 

away from Him that speaketh from 

heaven." 
"'I am Jesus, whom thou persecutest." 
"I have much people in this city." 
" Depart! for I will send thee far hence unto 

the Gentiles." 
" Be of good cheer, Paul ! " 
" My strength is made perfect in weakness." 
" We have a great High-Priest." 
"I, Jesus, have sent mine angel to testify 

unto you these things in the churches." 



A Glad Wel- 
come. 

The Judge. 



Coming Sgairt. 

"Behold, the Lord cometh with ten thou- 
sand of His sainV. " 

" The Lord Jesus Christ, who shall judge the 
quick and the dead at His appearing." 



298 



INDEX ACCORDING TO TEXTS. 



En ©Iorg. 



Rest. " And so shall we be ever with the Lord." 

The Bride. " The marriage of the Lamb has come, and 

His wife has made herself ready." 
The Holy City. "The Holy City, New Jerusalem." 



fdKi^ 



LIBRARY 




